Digital Access to Scholarship at HarvardThe DASH digital repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material.https://dash.harvard.edu2018-03-19T09:41:43Z2018-03-19T09:41:43Z5001261Automatically Determining Versions of Scholarly ArticlesRothchild, Daniel HugoShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:327067142017-07-28T07:58:28Z2017-01-01T00:00:00ZAutomatically Determining Versions of Scholarly Articles
Rothchild, Daniel Hugo; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
Background: Repositories of scholarly articles should provide authoritative information about the materials they distribute and should distribute those materials in keeping with pertinent laws. To do so, it is important to have accurate information about the versions of articles in a collection.
Analysis: This article presents a simple statistical model to classify articles as author manuscripts or versions of record, with parameters trained on a collection of articles that have been hand-annotated for version. The algorithm achieves about 94 percent accuracy on average (cross-validated).
Conclusion and implications: The average pairwise annotator agreement among a group of experts was 94 percent, showing that the method developed in this article displays performance competitive with human experts.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZChallenges in Data-to-Document GenerationWiseman, Sam JoshuaShieber, Stuart MerrillRush, Alexander Sasha Matthewhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:339278762017-09-21T07:32:31Z2017-01-01T00:00:00ZChallenges in Data-to-Document Generation
Wiseman, Sam Joshua; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Rush, Alexander Sasha Matthew
Recent neural models have shown significant progress on the problem of generating short descriptive texts conditioned on a small number of database records. In this work, we suggest a slightly more difficult data-to-text generation task, and investigate how effective current approaches are on this task. In particular, we introduce a new, large-scale corpus of data records paired with descriptive documents, propose a series of extractive evaluation methods for analyzing performance, and obtain baseline results using current neural generation methods. Experiments show that these models produce fluent text, but fail to convincingly approximate human-generated documents. Moreover, even templated baselines exceed the performance of these neural models on some metrics, though copy- and reconstruction-based extensions lead to noticeable improvements.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZPrinciples for Designing an AI Competition, or Why the Turing Test Fails as an Inducement PrizeShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:277336902017-07-28T07:43:31Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZPrinciples for Designing an AI Competition, or Why the Turing Test Fails as an Inducement Prize
Shieber, Stuart Merrill
If the artificial intelligence research community is to have a challenge problem as an incentive for research, as many have called for, it behooves us to learn the principles of past successful inducement prize competitions. Those principles argue against the Turing test proper as an appropriate task, despite its appropriateness as a criterion (perhaps the only one) for attributing intelligence to a machine.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZAntecedent Prediction Without a PipelineWiseman, Sam JoshuaRush, Alexander MatthewShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:293473392017-07-28T07:51:38Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZAntecedent Prediction Without a Pipeline
Wiseman, Sam Joshua; Rush, Alexander Matthew; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
We consider several antecedent prediction models that use no pipelined features generated by upstream systems. Models trained in this way are interesting because they allow for side-stepping the intricacies of upstream models, and because we might expect them to generalize better to situations in which upstream features are unavailable or unreliable. Through quantitative and qualitative error analysis we identify what sorts of cases are particularly difficult for such models, and suggest some directions for further improvement.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZSentence-level grammatical error identification as sequence-to-sequence correctionSchmaltz, Allen RichardKim, YoonRush, Alexander MatthewShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:272664722017-07-28T07:43:08Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZSentence-level grammatical error identification as sequence-to-sequence correction
Schmaltz, Allen Richard; Kim, Yoon; Rush, Alexander Matthew; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
We demonstrate that an attention-based encoder-decoder model can be used for sentence-level grammatical error identification for the Automated Evaluation of Scientific Writing (AESW) Shared Task 2016. The attention-based encoder-decoder models can be used for the generation of corrections, in addition to error identification, which is of interest for certain end-user applications. We show that a character-based encoder-decoder model is particularly effective, outperforming other results on the AESW Shared Task on its own, and showing gains over a word-based counterpart. Our final model— a combination of three character-based encoder-decoder models, one word-based encoder-decoder model, and a sentence-level CNN—is the highest performing system on the AESW 2016 binary prediction Shared Task.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZWord Ordering Without SyntaxSchmaltz, Allen RichardRush, Alexander MatthewShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:286522152017-07-28T07:47:50Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZWord Ordering Without Syntax
Schmaltz, Allen Richard; Rush, Alexander Matthew; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
Recent work on word ordering has argued that syntactic structure is important, or even required, for effectively recovering the order of a sentence. We find that, in fact, an n-gram language model with a simple heuristic gives strong results on this task. Furthermore, we show that a long short-term memory (LSTM) language model is even more effective at recovering order, with our basic model outperforming a state-of-the-art syntactic model by 11.5 BLEU points. Additional data and larger beams yield further gains, at the expense of training and search time.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZIngenium: Engaging Novice Students with Latin GrammarZhou, SharonLivingston, IvySchiefsky, Mark JohnShieber, Stuart MerrillGajos, Krzysztof Zhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:248335902017-07-28T08:05:07Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZIngenium: Engaging Novice Students with Latin Grammar
Zhou, Sharon; Livingston, Ivy; Schiefsky, Mark John; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Gajos, Krzysztof Z
Reading Latin poses many difficulties for English speakers, because they are accustomed to relying on word order to determine the roles of words in a sentence. In Latin, the grammatical form of a word, and not its position, is responsible for determining the word’s function in a sentence. It has
proven challenging to develop pedagogical techniques that successfully draw students’ attention to the grammar of Latin and that students find engaging enough to use. Building on some of the most promising prior work in Latin instruction— the Michigan Latin approach—and on the insights underlying block-based programming languages used to teach children the basics of computer science, we developed Ingenium.
Ingenium uses abstract puzzle blocks to communicate grammatical concepts. Engaging students in grammatical reflection, Ingenium succeeds when students are able to effectively decipher the meaning of Latin sentences. We adapted Ingenium to be used for two standard classroom activities: sentence translations and fill-in-the-blank exercises. We evaluated Ingenium with 67 novice Latin students in universities across the United States. When using Ingenium, participants opted to perform more optional exercises, completed translation exercises with significantly fewer errors related to word order and errors overall, as well as reported higher levels of engagement and attention to grammar than when using a traditional text-based interface.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZGood Practices For University Open-Access Policies (2013)Suber, PeterShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:143027012017-04-07T15:54:07Z2015-03-27T00:00:00ZGood Practices For University Open-Access Policies (2013)
Suber, Peter; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
2015-03-27T00:00:00ZIs this article consistent with Hinchliffe's rule?Shieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:168830012015-06-30T07:31:50Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZIs this article consistent with Hinchliffe's rule?
Shieber, Stuart Merrill
I demonstrate that Hinchliffe’s rule – if the title of a scholarly article is a yes-no question, the answer is “no” – is paradoxical, by providing an article whose title is a question whose answer is “no” if and only if its answer is “yes”.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZGood Practices for University Open-Access Policies (2015)Suber, PeterShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:318864522017-07-28T08:19:51Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZGood Practices for University Open-Access Policies (2015)
Suber, Peter; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZLearning Anaphoricity and Antecedent Ranking Features for Coreference ResolutionWiseman, Sam JoshuaRush, Alexander MatthewShieber, Stuart MerrillWeston, Jasonhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:248309012017-07-28T08:02:12Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZLearning Anaphoricity and Antecedent Ranking Features for Coreference Resolution
Wiseman, Sam Joshua; Rush, Alexander Matthew; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Weston, Jason
We introduce a simple, non-linear mention-ranking model for coreference resolution that attempts to learn distinct feature representations for anaphoricity detection and antecedent ranking, which we encourage by pre-training on a pair of corresponding subtasks. Although we use only simple, unconjoined features, the model is able to learn useful representations, and we report the best overall score on the CoNLL 2012 English test set to date.
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZThere Can Be No Turing-Test--Passing Memorizing MachinesShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:116841562015-04-30T01:13:15Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZThere Can Be No Turing-Test--Passing Memorizing Machines
Shieber, Stuart M.
Anti-behaviorist arguments against the validity of the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence are based on a <i>memorizing machine</i>, which has recorded within it responses to every possible Turing Test interaction of up to a fixed length. The mere possibility of such a machine is claimed to be enough to invalidate the Turing Test.
I consider the nomological possibility of memorizing machines, and how long a Turing Test they can pass. I replicate my previous analysis of this <i>critical Turing Test length</i> based on the age of the universe, show how considerations of communication time shorten that estimate and allow eliminating the sole remaining contingent assumption, and argue that the bound is so short that it is incompatible with the very notion of the Turing Test. I conclude that the memorizing machine objection to the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence is invalid.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZBimorphisms and synchronous grammarsShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:124104532015-04-30T01:13:15Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZBimorphisms and synchronous grammars
Shieber, Stuart Merrill
We tend to think of the study of language as proceeding by characterizing the strings and structures of a language, and we think of natural language processing as using those structures to build systems of utility in manipulating the language. But many language-related problems are more fruitfully viewed as requiring the specification of a relation between two languages, rather than the specification of a single language. We provide a synthesis and extension of work that unifies two approaches to such language relations: the automata-theoretic approach based on tree transducers that transform trees to their counterparts in the relation, and the grammatical approach based on synchronous grammars that derive pairs of trees in the relation. In particular, we characterize synchronous tree-substitution grammars and synchronous tree-adjoining grammars in terms of bimorphisms, which have previously been used to characterize tree transducers. In the process, we provide new approaches to formalizing the various concepts: a metanotation for describing varieties of tree automata and transducers in equational terms; a rigorous formalization of tree-adjoining and tree-substitution grammars and their synchronous counterparts, using trees over ranked alphabets; and generalizations of tree-adjoining grammar allowing multiple adjunction.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZDiscriminatively Reranking Abductive Proofs for Plan RecognitionWiseman, Sam JoshuaShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:248309002017-07-28T07:57:27Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZDiscriminatively Reranking Abductive Proofs for Plan Recognition
Wiseman, Sam Joshua; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
We investigate the use of a simple, discriminative reranking approach to plan recognition in an abductive setting. In contrast to recent work, which attempts to model abductive plan recognition using various formalisms that integrate logic and graphical models (such as Markov Logic Networks or Bayesian Logic Programs), we instead advocate a simpler, more flexible approach in which plans found through an abductive beam-search are discriminatively scored based on arbitrary features. We show that this approach performs well even with relatively few positive training examples, and we obtain state-of-the-art results on two abductive plan recognition datasets, outperforming more complicated systems.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZEliciting and annotating uncertainty in spoken languagePon-Barry, HeatherShieber, Stuart MerrillLongenbaugh, Nicholas Stevenhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:121499632015-04-30T01:13:14Z2014-01-01T00:00:00ZEliciting and annotating uncertainty in spoken language
Pon-Barry, Heather; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Longenbaugh, Nicholas Steven
A major challenge in the ﬁeld of automatic recognition of emotion and affect in speech is the subjective nature of affect labels. The most common approach to acquiring affect labels is to ask a panel of listeners to rate a corpus of spoken utterances along one or more dimensions of interest. For applications ranging from educational technology to voice search to dictation, a speaker’s level of certainty is a primary dimension of interest. In such applications, we would like to know the speaker’s actual level of certainty, but past research has only revealed listeners’ perception of the speaker’s level of certainty. In this paper, we present a method for eliciting spoken utterances using stimuli that we design such that they have a quantitative, crowdsourced legibility score. While we cannot control a speaker’s actual internal level of certainty, the use of these stimuli provides a better estimate of internal certainty compared to existing speech corpora. The Harvard Uncertainty Speech Corpus, containing speech data, certainty annotations, and prosodic features, is made available to the research community.
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZSolving Problems in an Uncertain WorldShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:109845732015-05-07T13:05:48Z2013-08-27T00:00:00ZSolving Problems in an Uncertain World
Shieber, Stuart M.
The issue of problem solving in the context of incomplete or inconsistent information is a precursor to designing multiple agent planning systems. We present some general principles of planning and problem-solving in uncertainty, and instantiate these principles in a problem-solving system based on the NOAH planning system. The new NOAH system, working on the blocks world as a test domain, plans in certainty with the same efficacy as the original system, but can also handle a large class of errors caused by inconsistent or incomplete information.
2013-08-27T00:00:00ZEcumenical open access and the Finch Report principlesShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:108677832015-04-30T01:13:14Z2013-01-01T00:00:00ZEcumenical open access and the Finch Report principles
Shieber, Stuart M.
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZA Context Free TAG VariantSwanson, BenYamangil, ElifCharniak, EugeneShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:108869782015-04-30T01:13:15Z2013-01-01T00:00:00ZA Context Free TAG Variant
Swanson, Ben; Yamangil, Elif; Charniak, Eugene; Shieber, Stuart M.
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZNonparametric Bayesian Inference and Efficient Parsing for Tree-adjoining GrammarsYamangil, ElifShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:113262312015-06-19T16:39:20Z2013-01-01T00:00:00ZNonparametric Bayesian Inference and Efficient Parsing for Tree-adjoining Grammars
Yamangil, Elif; Shieber, Stuart M.
In the line of research extending statistical parsing to more expressive grammar formalisms, we demonstrate for the first time the use of tree-adjoining grammars (TAG). We present a Bayesian nonparametric model for estimating a probabilistic TAG from a parsed corpus, along with novel block sampling methods and approximation transformations for TAG that allow efficient parsing. Our work shows performance improvements on the Penn Treebank and finds more compact yet linguistically rich representations of the data, but more importantly provides techniques in grammar transformation and statistical inference that make practical the use of these more expressive systems, thereby enabling further experimentation along these lines.
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Case for the Journal’s Use of a CC-BY LicenseShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:101219602015-04-30T01:13:13Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Case for the Journal’s Use of a CC-BY License
Shieber, Stuart M.
Journal of Language Modelling provides its articles under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. We discuss why this is the appropriate choice for the journal.
2012-01-01T00:00:00ZStatement of Stuart M. Shieber before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, U.S. House of RepresentativesShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:85068692015-04-30T01:13:12Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZStatement of Stuart M. Shieber before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, U.S. House of Representatives
Shieber, Stuart M.
2012-01-01T00:00:00ZEstimating Compact Yet Rich Tree Insertion GrammarsYamangil, ElifShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:113262302015-04-30T01:13:14Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZEstimating Compact Yet Rich Tree Insertion Grammars
Yamangil, Elif; Shieber, Stuart M.
We present a Bayesian nonparametric model for estimating tree insertion grammars (TIG), building upon recent work in Bayesian inference of tree substitution grammars (TSG) via Dirichlet processes. Under our general variant of TIG, grammars are estimated via the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm that uses a context free grammar transformation as a proposal, which allows for cubic-time string parsing as well as tree-wide joint sampling of derivations in the spirit of Cohn and Blunsom (2010). We use the Penn treebank for our experiments and find that our proposal Bayesian TIG model not only has competitive parsing performance but also finds compact yet linguistically rich TIG representations of the data.
2012-01-01T00:00:00ZPlan Recognition in Exploratory DomainsGal, Ya'akovReddy, SwapnaShieber, Stuart M.Rubin, AndeeGrosz, Barbara J.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:53431662015-04-30T01:13:13Z2012-01-01T00:00:00ZPlan Recognition in Exploratory Domains
Gal, Ya'akov; Reddy, Swapna; Shieber, Stuart M.; Rubin, Andee; Grosz, Barbara J.
This paper describes a challenging plan recognition problem that arises in environments in which agents engage widely in exploratory behavior, and presents new algorithms for effective plan recognition in such settings. In exploratory domains, agentsʼ actions map onto logs of behavior that include switching between activities, extraneous actions, and mistakes. Flexible pedagogical software, such as the application considered in this paper for statistics education, is a paradigmatic example of such domains, but many other settings exhibit similar characteristics. The paper establishes the task of plan recognition in exploratory domains to be NP-hard and compares several approaches for recognizing plans in these domains, including new heuristic methods that vary the extent to which they employ backtracking, as well as a reduction to constraint-satisfaction problems. The algorithms were empirically evaluated on peopleʼs interaction with flexible, open-ended statistics education software used in schools. Data was collected from adults using the software in a lab setting as well as middle school students using the software in the classroom. The constraint satisfaction approaches were complete, but were an order of magnitude slower than the heuristic approaches. In addition, the heuristic approaches were able to perform within 4% of the constraint satisfaction approaches on student data from the classroom, which reflects the intended user population of the software. These results demonstrate that the heuristic approaches offer a good balance between performance and computation time when recognizing peopleʼs activities in the pedagogical domain of interest.
2012-01-01T00:00:00ZInverting the Turing Test [review of The Most Human Human by Brian Christian]Shieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:53431652015-04-30T01:13:13Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZInverting the Turing Test [review of The Most Human Human by Brian Christian]
Shieber, Stuart M.
In his book The Most Human Human, Brian Christian extrapolates from his experiences at the 2009 Loebner Prize competition, a competition among chatbots (computer programs that engage in conversation with people) to see which is "most human." In doing so, he demonstrates once again that the human being may be the only animal that overinterprets.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZNeo-Riemannian Cycle Detection with Weighted Finite-State TransducersShieber, Stuart M.Bragg, JonathanChew, Elainehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:102434192015-04-30T01:13:13Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZNeo-Riemannian Cycle Detection with Weighted Finite-State Transducers
Shieber, Stuart M.; Bragg, Jonathan; Chew, Elaine
This paper proposes a ﬁnite-state model for detecting harmonic cycles as described by neo-Riemannian theorists. Given a string of triads representing a harmonic analysis of a piece, the task is to identify and label all substrings corresponding to these cycles with high accuracy. The solution method uses a noisy channel model implemented with weighted ﬁnitestate transducers. On a dataset of four works by Franz Schubert, our model predicted cycles in the same regions as cycles in the ground truth with a precision of 0.18 and a recall of 1.0. The recalled cycles had an average edit distance of 3.2 insertions or deletions from the ground truth cycles, which average 6.4 labeled triads in length. We suggest ways in which our model could be used to contribute to current work in music theory, and be generalized to other music pattern-ﬁnding applications.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZRecognizing Uncertainty in SpeechShieber, Stuart M.Pon-Barry, Heather Robertahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:45961862017-01-12T02:36:17Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZRecognizing Uncertainty in Speech
Shieber, Stuart M.; Pon-Barry, Heather Roberta
We address the problem of inferring a speaker’s level of certainty based on prosodic information in the speech signal, which has application in speech-based dialogue systems. We show that using phrase-level prosodic features centered around the phrases causing uncertainty, in addition to utterance-level prosodic features, improves our model’s level of certainty classification. In addition, our models can be used to predict which phrase a person is uncertain about. These results rely on a novel method for eliciting utterances of varying levels of certainty that allows us to compare the utility of contextually-based feature sets. We elicit level of certainty ratings from both the speakers themselves and a panel of listeners, finding that there is often a mismatch between speakers’ internal states and their perceived states, and highlighting the importance of this distinction.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZComplexity, Parsing, and Factorization of Tree-Local Multi-Component Tree-Adjoining GrammarShieber, Stuart M.Satta, GiorgioNesson, Rebeccahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47316032015-04-30T01:13:11Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZComplexity, Parsing, and Factorization of Tree-Local Multi-Component Tree-Adjoining Grammar
Shieber, Stuart M.; Satta, Giorgio; Nesson, Rebecca
Tree-Local Multi-Component Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TL-MCTAG) is an appealing formalism for natural language representation because it arguably allows the encapsulation of the appropriate domain of locality within its elementary structures. Its multicomponent structure allows modeling of lexical items that may ultimately have elements far apart in a sentence, such as quantifiers and Wh-words. When used as the base formalism for a synchronous grammar, its flexibility allows it to express both the close relationships and the divergent structure necessary to capture the links between the syntax and semantics of a single language or the syntax of two different languages. Its limited expressivity provides constraints on movement and, we posit, may have generated additional popularity based on a misconception about its parsing complexity. Although TL-MCTAG was shown to be equivalent in expressivity to TAG when it was first introduced (Weir 1988), the complexity of TL-MCTAG is still not well-understood. This paper offers a thorough examination of the problem of TL-MCTAG recognition, showing that even highly restricted forms of TL-MCTAG are NP-complete to recognize. However, in spite of the provable difficulty of the recognition problem, we offer several algorithms that can substantially improve processing efficiency. First, we present a parsing algorithm that improves on the baseline parsing method and runs in polynomial time when both the fan-out and rank of the input grammar are bounded. Second, we offer an optimal, efficient algorithm for factorizing a grammar to produce a strongly-equivalent TL-MCTAG grammar with the rank of the grammar minimized.
2010-01-01T00:00:00ZBayesian Synchronous Tree-Substitution Grammar Induction and Its Application to Sentence CompressionYamangil, ElifShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47338332015-04-30T01:13:11Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZBayesian Synchronous Tree-Substitution Grammar Induction and Its Application to Sentence Compression
Yamangil, Elif; Shieber, Stuart M.
We describe our experiments with training algorithms for tree-to-tree synchronous tree-substitution grammar (STSG) for monolingual translation tasks such as sentence compression and paraphrasing. These translation tasks are characterized by the relative ability to commit to parallel parse trees and availability of word alignments, yet the unavailability of large-scale data, calling for a Bayesian tree-to-tree formalism. We formalize nonparametric Bayesian STSG with epsilon alignment in full generality, and provide a Gibbs sampling algorithm for posterior inference tailored to the task of extractive sentence compression. We achieve improvements against a number of baselines, including expectation maximization and variational Bayes training, illustrating the merits of nonparametric inference over the space of grammars as opposed to sparse parametric inference with a ﬁxed grammar.
2010-01-01T00:00:00ZAgent Decision-Making in Open Mixed NetworksGal, Ya'akovGrosz, Barbara J.Kraus, SaritShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47262872015-04-30T01:13:11Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZAgent Decision-Making in Open Mixed Networks
Gal, Ya'akov; Grosz, Barbara J.; Kraus, Sarit; Shieber, Stuart M.
Computer systems increasingly carry out tasks in mixed networks, that is in group settings in which they interact both with other computer systems and with people. Participants in these heterogeneous human-computer groups vary in their capabilities, goals, and strategies; they may cooperate, collaborate, or compete. The presence of people in mixed networks raises challenges for the design and the evaluation of decision-making strategies for computer agents. This paper describes several new decision-making models that represent, learn and adapt to various social attributes that influence people's decision-making and presents a novel approach to evaluating such models. It identifies a range of social attributes in an open-network setting that influence people's decision-making and thus affect the performance of computer-agent strategies, and establishes the importance of learning and adaptation to the success of such strategies. The settings vary in the capabilities, goals, and strategies that people bring into their interactions. The studies deploy a configurable system called Colored Trails (CT) that generates a family of games. CT is an abstract, conceptually simple but highly versatile game in which players negotiate and exchange resources to enable them to achieve their individual or group goals. It provides a realistic analogue to multi-agent task domains, while not requiring extensive domain modeling. It is less abstract than payoff matrices, and people exhibit less strategic and more helpful behavior in CT than in the identical payoff matrix decision-making context. By not requiring extensive domain modeling, CT enables agent researchers to focus their attention on strategy design, and it provides an environment in which the influence of social factors can be better isolated and studied.
2010-01-01T00:00:00ZEfficiently Parsable Extensions to Tree-Local Multicomponent TAGNesson, RebeccaShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41332852015-04-30T01:13:11Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZEfficiently Parsable Extensions to Tree-Local Multicomponent TAG
Nesson, Rebecca; Shieber, Stuart M.
Recent applications of Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TAG) to the domain of semantics as well as new attention to syntactic phenomena have given rise to increased interested in more expressive and complex multicomponent TAG formalisms (MCTAG). Although many constructions can be modeled using tree-local MCTAG (TL-MCTAG), certain applications require even more flexibility. In this paper we suggest a shift in focus from constraining locality and complexity through tree- and set-locality to constraining locality and complexity through restrictions on the derivational distance between trees in the same tree set in a valid derivation. We examine three formalisms, restricted NS-MCTAG, restricted Vector-TAG and delayed TL-MCTAG, that use notions of derivational distance to constrain locality and demonstrate how they permit additional expressivity beyond TL-MCTAG without increasing complexity to the level of set local MCTAG.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZEquity for Open-Access Journal PublishingShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41408202015-04-30T01:13:11Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZEquity for Open-Access Journal Publishing
Shieber, Stuart M.
Scholars write articles to be read--the more access to their articles the better--so one might think that the open-access approach to publishing, in which articles are freely available online to all without interposition of an access fee, would be an attractive competitor to traditional subscription-based journal publishing. But open-access journal publishing is currently at a systematic disadvantage relative to the traditional model. I propose a simple, cost-effective remedy to this inequity that would put open-access publishing on a path to become a sustainable, efficient system, allowing the two journal publishing systems to compete on a more level playing field. The issue is important, first, because academic institutions shouldn’t perpetuate barriers to an open-access business model on principle and, second, because the subscription-fee business model has manifested systemic dysfunctionalities in practice. After describing the problem with the subscription-fee model, I turn to the proposal for providing equity for open-access journal publishing--the open-access compact.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZA Simple Language for Novel Visualizations of InformationShieber, Stuart M.Lucas, Wendyhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47730372015-04-30T01:13:11Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZA Simple Language for Novel Visualizations of Information
Shieber, Stuart M.; Lucas, Wendy
While information visualization tools support the representation of abstract data, their ability to enhance one’s understanding of complex relationships can be hindered by a limited set of predefined charts. To enable novel visualization over multiple variables, we propose a declarative language for specifying informational graphics from first principles. The language maps properties of generic objects to graphical representations based on scaled interpretations of data values. An iterative approach to constraint solving that involves user advice enables the optimization of graphic layouts. The flexibility and expressiveness of a powerful but relatively easy to use grammar supports the expression of visualizations ranging from the simple to the complex.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZIdentifying Uncertain Words within an Utterance via Prosodic FeaturesPon-Barry, Heather RobertaShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47294242015-04-30T01:13:12Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZIdentifying Uncertain Words within an Utterance via Prosodic Features
Pon-Barry, Heather Roberta; Shieber, Stuart M.
We describe an experiment that investigates whether sub-utterance prosodic features can be used to detect uncertainty at the wordlevel. That is, given an utterance that is classified as uncertain, we want to determine which word or phrase the speaker is uncertain about. We have a corpus of utterances spoken under varying degrees of certainty. Using combinations of sub-utterance prosodic features we train models to predict the level of certainty of an utterance. On a set of utterances that were perceived to be uncertain, we compare the predictions of our models for two candidate target word segmentations: (a) one with the actual word causing uncertainty as the proposed target word, and (b) one with a control word as the proposed target word. Our best model correctly identifies the word causing the uncertainty rather than the control word 91% of the time.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Importance of Sub-Utterance Prosody in Predicting Level of CertaintyShieber, Stuart M.Pon-Barry, Heather Robertahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47292502015-04-30T01:13:12Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Importance of Sub-Utterance Prosody in Predicting Level of Certainty
Shieber, Stuart M.; Pon-Barry, Heather Roberta
We present an experiment aimed at understanding how to optimally use acoustic and prosodic information to predict a speaker's level of certainty. With a corpus of utterances where we can isolate a single word or phrase that is responsible for the speaker's level of certainty we use different sets of sub-utterance prosodic features to train models for predicting an utterance's perceived level of certainty. Our results suggest that using prosodic features of the word or phrase responsible for the level of certainty and of its surrounding context improves the prediction accuracy without increasing the total number of features when compared to using only features taken from the utterance as a whole.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZRecognition of Users' Activities using Constraint SatisfactionReddy, Swapna CherukupalliGal, Ya'akovShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47368892015-04-30T01:13:12Z2009-01-01T00:00:00ZRecognition of Users' Activities using Constraint Satisfaction
Reddy, Swapna Cherukupalli; Gal, Ya'akov; Shieber, Stuart M.
Ideally designed software allow users to explore and pursue interleaving plans, making it challenging to automatically recognize user interactions. The recognition algorithms presented use constraint satisfaction techniques to compare user interaction histories to a set of ideal solutions. We evaluate these algorithms on data obtained from user interactions with a commercially available pedagogical software, and find that these algorithms identified users’ activities with 93% accuracy.
2009-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous Vector TAG for Syntax and Semantics: Control Verbs, Relative Clauses, and Inverse LinkingShieber, Stuart M.Nesson, Rebeccahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47457462015-04-30T01:13:12Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous Vector TAG for Syntax and Semantics: Control Verbs, Relative Clauses, and Inverse Linking
Shieber, Stuart M.; Nesson, Rebecca
Recent work has used the synchronous tree-adjoining grammar (STAG) formalism to demonstrate that many of the cases in which syntactic and semantic derivations appeared to be divergent could be handled elegantly through synchronization. This research has provided syntax and semantics for diverse and complex lin- guistic phenomena. However, certain hard cases push the STAG formalism to its limits, requiring awkward analyses or leaving no clear solution at all. In this paper a new variant of STAG, synchronous vector TAG (SV-TAG), and demonstrate that it has the potential to handle hard cases such as control verbs, relative clauses, and in- verse linking, while maintaining the simplicity of previous STAG syntax-semantics analyses.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZOptimal k-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammarNesson, RebeccaShieber, StuartSatta, Giorgiohttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23096612015-04-30T01:13:08Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZOptimal k-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammar
Nesson, Rebecca; Shieber, Stuart; Satta, Giorgio
Synchronous Tree-Adjoining Grammar (STAG) is a promising formalism for syntax-aware machine translation and simultaneous computation of natural-language syntax and semantics. Current research in both of these areas is actively pursuing its incorporation. However, STAG parsing is known to be NP-hard due to the potential for intertwined correspondences between the linked nonterminal symbols in the elementary structures. Given a particular grammar, the polynomial degree of efficient STAG parsing algorithms depends directly on the rank of the grammar: the maximum number of correspondences that appear within a single elementary structure. In this paper we present a compile-time algorithm for transforming a STAG into a strongly-equivalent STAG that optimally minimizes the rank, k, across the grammar. The algorithm performs in O( |G| + |Y| · (L_G)^3 ) time where L_G is the maximum number of links in any single synchronous tree pair in the grammar and Y is the set of synchronous tree pairs of G.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZTowards collaborative intelligent tutors: Automated recognition of users' strategies.Grosz, BarbaraRubin, AndeeYamangil, ElifShieber, StuartGal, Ya'akov Kobihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526052015-04-30T01:13:02Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZTowards collaborative intelligent tutors: Automated recognition of users' strategies.
Grosz, Barbara; Rubin, Andee; Yamangil, Elif; Shieber, Stuart; Gal, Ya'akov Kobi
This paper addresses the problem of inferring students’ strategies when they interact with data-modeling software used for pedagogical purposes. The software enables students to learn about statistical data by building and analyzing their own models. Automatic recognition of students’ activities when interacting with pedagogical software is challenging. Students can pursue several plans in parallel and interleave the execution of these plans. The algorithm presented in this paper decomposes students’ complete interaction histories with the software into hierarchies of interdependent tasks that may be subsequently compared with ideal solutions. This algorithm is evaluated empirically using commercial software that is used in many schools. Results indicate that the algorithm is able to (1) identify the plans students use when solving problems using the software; (2) distinguish between those actions in students’ plans that play a salient part in their problem-solving and those representing exploratory actions and mistakes; and (3) capture students’ interleaving and free-order action sequences.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZPractical secrecy-preserving, verifiably correct and trustworthy auctionsThorpe, ChristopherShieber, StuartRabin, MichaelParkes, Davidhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20316722015-04-30T01:13:09Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZPractical secrecy-preserving, verifiably correct and trustworthy auctions
Thorpe, Christopher; Shieber, Stuart; Rabin, Michael; Parkes, David
We present a practical protocol based on homomorphic cryptography for conducting provably fair sealed-bid auctions. The system preserves the secrecy of the bids, even after the announcement of auction results, while also providing for public veriﬁability of the correctness and trustworthiness of the outcome. No party, including the auctioneer, receives any information about bids before the auction closes, and no bidder is able to change or repudiate any bid. The system is illustrated through application to ﬁrst-price, uniform-price and second-price auctions, including multi-item auctions. Empirical results based on an analysis of a prototype demonstrate the practicality of our protocol for real-world applications.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZColored trails: A multiagent system testbed for decision-making research (demonstration)Shieber, StuartGrosz, BarbaraPfeffer, AvromFicici, SevanGal, Ya'akov Kobihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526012015-04-30T01:13:10Z2008-01-01T00:00:00ZColored trails: A multiagent system testbed for decision-making research (demonstration)
Shieber, Stuart; Grosz, Barbara; Pfeffer, Avrom; Ficici, Sevan; Gal, Ya'akov Kobi
With increasing frequency, computer agents participate in collaborative and competitive multiagent domains in which humans reason strategically to make decisions. The deployment of computer agents in such domains requires that the agents understand something about human behavior so that they can interact successfully with people; the computer agents must be sensitive to how people reason in strategic settings as well as to the social utilities people employ to inform their reasoning. To date, these design requirements for computer agents have received relatively little attention. To further research in this area, we are developing the Colored Trails (CT) testbed [5], a configurable and extensible open-source system for use by the research community at large to investigate multiagent decision making.
2008-01-01T00:00:00ZA Language for Specifying Informational Graphics from First PrinciplesShieber, Stuart M.Lucas, Wendyhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47458472015-04-30T01:13:12Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZA Language for Specifying Informational Graphics from First Principles
Shieber, Stuart M.; Lucas, Wendy
Informational visualization tools, such as commercial charting packages, provide a standard set of visualizations for tabular data, including bar charts, scatter plots, pie charts, and the like. For some combinations of data and task, these are suitable visualizations. For others, however, novel visualizations over multiple variables would be preferred but are unavailable in the fixed list of standard options. To allow for these cases, we introduce a declarative language for specifying visualizations on the basis of the first principles on which (a subset of) informational graphics are built. The functionality we aim to provide with this language is presented by way of example, from simple scatter plots to versions of two quite famous visualizations: Minard’s depiction of troop strength during Napoleon’s march on Moscow and a map of the early ARPAnet from the ancient history of the Internet. Benefits of our approach include flexibility and expressiveness for specifying a range of visualizations that cannot be rendered with standard commercial systems.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZProbabilistic synchronous tree-adjoining grammars for machine translation: The argument from bilingual dictionaries.Shieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526072015-04-30T01:13:09Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZProbabilistic synchronous tree-adjoining grammars for machine translation: The argument from bilingual dictionaries.
Shieber, Stuart
We provide a conceptual basis for thinking of machine translation in terms of synchronous grammars in general, and probabilistic synchronous tree-adjoining grammars in particular. Evidence for the view is found in the structure of bilingual dictionaries of the last several millennia.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZExtraction phenomena in synchronous TAG syntax and semantics.Shieber, StuartNesson, Rebeccahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526022015-04-30T01:13:05Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZExtraction phenomena in synchronous TAG syntax and semantics.
Shieber, Stuart; Nesson, Rebecca
We present a proposal for the structure of noun phrases in Synchronous Tree-Adjoining Grammar (STAG) syntax and semantics that permits an elegant and uniform analysis of a variety of phenomena, including quantifier scope and extraction phenomena such as wh-questions with both moved and in-place wh-words, pied-piping, stranding of prepositions, and topicalization. The tight coupling between syntax and semantics enforced by the STAG helps to illuminate the critical relationships and filter out analyses that may be appealing for either syntax or semantics alone but do not allow for a meaningful relationship between them.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Turing test as interactive proofShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20272032015-04-30T01:13:02Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Turing test as interactive proof
Shieber, Stuart
In 1950, Alan Turing proposed his eponymous test based on indistinguishability of verbal behavior as a replacement for the question "Can machines think?" Since then, two mutually contradictory but well-founded attitudes towards the Turing Test have arisen in the philosophical literature. On the one hand is the attitude that has become philosophical conventional wisdom, viz., that the Turing Test is hopelessly flawed as a sufficient condition for intelligence, while on the other hand is the overwhelming sense that were a machine to pass a real live full-fledged Turing Test, it would be a sign of nothing but our orneriness to deny it the attribution of intelligence. The arguments against the sufficiency of the Turing Test for determining intelligence rely on showing that some extra conditions are logically necessary for intelligence beyond the behavioral properties exhibited by an agent under a Turing Test. Therefore, it cannot follow logically from passing a Turing Test that the agent is intelligent. I argue that these extra conditions can be revealed by the Turing Test, so long as we allow a very slight weakening of the criterion from one of logical proof to one of statistical proof under weak realizability assumptions. The argument depends on the notion of interactive proof developed in theoretical computer science, along with some simple physical facts that constrain the information capacity of agents. Crucially, the weakening is so slight as to make no conceivable difference from a practical standpoint. Thus, the Gordian knot between the two opposing views of the sufficiency of the Turing Test can be cut.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZAbbreviated text input using language modeling.Shieber, StuartNelken, Ranihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20272042015-04-30T01:13:09Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZAbbreviated text input using language modeling.
Shieber, Stuart; Nelken, Rani
We address the problem of improving the efficiency of natural language text input under degraded conditions (for instance, on mobile computing devices or by disabled users), by taking advantage of the informational redundancy in natural language. Previous approaches to this problem have been based on the idea of prediction of the text, but these require the user to take overt action to verify or select the system’s predictions. We propose taking advantage of the duality between prediction and compression. We allow the
user to enter text in compressed form, in particular, using a simple stipulated abbreviation method that reduces characters by 26.4%, yet is simple enough that it can be learned
easily and generated relatively fluently. We decode the abbreviated text using a statistical generative model of abbreviation, with a residual word error rate of 3.3%. The chief
component of this model is an n-gram language model. Because the system’s operation is
completely independent from the user’s, the overhead from cognitive task switching and
attending to the system’s actions online is eliminated, opening up the possibility that
the compression-based method can achieve text input efficiency improvements where the
prediction-based methods have not. We report the results of a user study evaluating this
method.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZMachine learning theory and practice as a source of insight into universal grammar.Shieber, StuartLappin, Shalomhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20316732015-04-30T01:13:08Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZMachine learning theory and practice as a source of insight into universal grammar.
Shieber, Stuart; Lappin, Shalom
In this paper, we explore the possibility that machine learning approaches to natural-language processing being developed in engineering-oriented computational linguistics may be able to provide specific scientific insights into the nature of human language. We argue that, in principle, machine learning results could inform basic debates about language, in one area at least, and that in practice, existing results may offer initial tentative support for this prospect. Further, results from computational learning theory can inform arguments carried on within linguistic theory as well.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZLexical Chaining and Word-Sense-DisambiguationNelken, RaniShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:91367302015-04-30T01:13:13Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZLexical Chaining and Word-Sense-Disambiguation
Nelken, Rani; Shieber, Stuart M.
Lexical chains algorithms attempt to find sequences of words in a document that are closely related semantically. Such chains have been argued to provide a good indication of the topics covered by the document without requiring a deeper analysis of the text, and have been proposed for many NLP tasks. Different underlying lexical semantic relations based on WordNet have been used for this task. Since links in WordNet connect synsets rather than words, open word-sense disambiguation becomes a necessary part of any chaining algorithm, even if the intended application is not disambiguation. Previous chaining algorithms have combined the tasks of disambiguation and chaining by choosing those word senses that maximize chain connectivity, a strategy which yields poor disambiguation accuracy in practice.
<p>We present a novel probabilistic algorithm for finding lexical chains. Our algorithm explicitly balances the requirements of maximizing chain connectivity with the choice of probable word-senses. The algorithm achieves better disambiguation results than all previous ones, but under its optimal settings shifts this balance totally in favor of probable senses, essentially ignoring the chains. This model points to an inherent conflict between chaining and word-sensedisambiguation. By establishing an upper bound on the disambiguation potential of lexical chains, we show that chaining is theoretically highly unlikely to achieve accurate disambiguation.
<p>Moreover, by defining a novel intrinsic evaluation criterion for lexical chains, we show that poor disambiguation accuracy also implies poor chain accuracy. Our results have crucial implications for chaining algorithms. At the very least, they show that disentangling disambiguation from chaining significantly improves chaining accuracy. The hardness of all-words disambiguation, however, implies that finding accurate lexical chains is harder than suggested by the literature.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZLexical Chaining and Word-Sense-DisambiguationNelken, RaniShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:240197792017-07-28T07:39:08Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZLexical Chaining and Word-Sense-Disambiguation
Nelken, Rani; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
Lexical chains algorithms attempt to find sequences of words in a document that are closely related semantically. Such chains have been argued to provide a good indication of the topics covered by the document without requiring a deeper analysis of the text, and have been proposed for many NLP tasks. Different underlying lexical semantic relations based on WordNet have been used for this task. Since links in WordNet connect synsets rather than words, open word-sense disambiguation becomes a necessary part of any chaining algorithm, even if the intended application is not disambiguation. Previous chaining algorithms have combined the tasks of disambiguation and chaining by choosing those word senses that maximize chain connectivity, a strategy which yields poor disambiguation accuracy in practice. We present a novel probabilistic algorithm for finding lexical chains. Our algorithm explicitly balances the requirements of maximizing chain connectivity with the choice of probable word-senses. The algorithm achieves better disambiguation results than all previous ones, but under its optimal settings shifts this balance totally in favor of probable senses, essentially ignoring the chains. This model points to an inherent conflict between chaining and word-sense-disambiguation. By establishing an upper bound on the disambiguation potential of lexical chains, we show that chaining is theoretically highly unlikely to achieve accurate disambiguation. Moreover, by defining a novel intrinsic evaluation criterion for lexical chains, we show that poor disambiguation accuracy also implies poor chain accuracy. Our results have crucial implications for chaining algorithms. At the very least, they show that disentangling disambiguation from chaining significantly improves chaining accuracy. The hardness of all-words disambiguation, however, implies that finding accurate lexical chains is harder than suggested by the literature.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe influence of task contexts on the decision-making of humans and computers.Gal, Ya'akov KobiAllain, AlexGrosz, BarbaraPfeffer, AvromShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526032015-04-30T01:13:09Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe influence of task contexts on the decision-making of humans and computers.
Gal, Ya'akov Kobi; Allain, Alex; Grosz, Barbara; Pfeffer, Avrom; Shieber, Stuart
Many environments in which people and computer agents interact involve deploying resources to accomplish tasks and satisfy goals. This paper investigates the way that the context in which decisions are made affects the behavior of people and the performance of computer agents that interact with people in such environments. It presents experiments that measured negotiation behavior in two different types of settings. One setting was a task context that made explicit the relationships among goals, (sub)tasks and resources. The other setting was a completely abstract context in which only the payoffs for the decision choices were listed. Results show that people are more helpful, less selfish, and less competitive when making decisions in task contexts than when making them in completely abstract contexts. Further, their overall performance was better in task contexts. A predictive computational model that was trained on data obtained in the task context outperformed a model that was trained under the abstract context. These results indicate that taking context into account is essential for the design of computer agents that will interact well with people.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Influence of Contexts on Decision-MakingGal, Ya'akovGrosz, Barbara J.Pfeffer, AviShieber, Stuart MerrillAllain, Alexhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:235742642017-07-28T08:10:34Z2007-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Influence of Contexts on Decision-Making
Gal, Ya'akov; Grosz, Barbara J.; Pfeffer, Avi; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Allain, Alex
Many environments in which people and computer agents interact involve deploying resources to accomplish tasks and satisfy goals. This paper investigates the way that the contextual setting in which decisions are made affects the behavior of people and the performance of computer agents that interact with people in such environments. It presents experiments that measured negotiation behavior in two types of contextual settings. One provided a task context that made explicit the relationship between goals, tasks and resources, The other provided a completely abstract context in which the payoffs for all decision choices were listed. Results show that people are more helpful, less selfish, and less competitive when making decisions in task contexts than when making them in completely abstract contexts. Further, their overall performance was better in task contexts. A predictive computational model that was trained on data obtained in task contexts outperformed a model that was trained under abstract contexts. These results indicate that modeling the way people make decisions in context is essential for the design of computer agents that will interact with people.
2007-01-01T00:00:00ZInduction of probabilistic synchronous tree-insertion grammars for machine translation.Nesson, RebeccaRush, AlexanderShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22612322015-04-30T01:13:08Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZInduction of probabilistic synchronous tree-insertion grammars for machine translation.
Nesson, Rebecca; Rush, Alexander; Shieber, Stuart
The more expressive and flexible a base formalism for machine translation is, the less efficient parsing of it will be. However, even among formalisms with the same parse complexity, some formalisms better realize the desired characteristics for machine translation formalisms than others. We introduce a particular formalism, probabilistic synchronous treeinsertion grammar (PSTIG) that we argue satisfies the desiderata optimally within the class of formalisms that can be parsed no less efficiently than context-free grammars and demonstrate that it outperforms state-of-the-art word-based and phrasebased finite-state translation models on training and test data taken from the EuroParl corpus (Koehn, 2005). We then argue that a higher level of translation quality can be achieved by hybridizing our induced model with elementary structures produced using supervised techniques such as those of Groves et al. (2004).
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZUnifying synchronous tree-adjoining grammars and tree transducers via bimorphisms.Shieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526092015-04-30T01:13:09Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZUnifying synchronous tree-adjoining grammars and tree transducers via bimorphisms.
Shieber, Stuart
We place synchronous tree-adjoining grammars and tree transducers in the single overarching framework of bimorphisms, continuing the unification of synchronous grammars and tree transducers initiated by Shieber (2004). Along the way, we present a new definition of the tree-adjoining grammar derivation relation based on a novel direct inter-reduction of TAG and monadic macro tree transducers.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZDoes the Turing Test demonstrate intelligence or not?Shieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22525962015-04-30T01:13:07Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZDoes the Turing Test demonstrate intelligence or not?
Shieber, Stuart
The Turing Test has served as a defining inspiration throughout the early history of artificial intelligence research. Its centrality arises in part because verbal behavior indistinguishable from that of humans seems like an incontrovertible criterion for intelligence, a "philosophical conversation stopper" as Dennett says. On the other hand, from the moment Turing's seminal Mind article was published, the conversation hasn't stopped; the appropriateness of the Test has been continually questioned, and current philosophical wisdom holds that the Turing Test is hopelessly flawed as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence. In this short article, I summarize for an artificial intelligence audience an argument that I have presented at length for a philosophical audience that attempts to reconcile these two mutually contradictory but well-founded attitudes towards the Turing Test that have been under constant debate since 1950.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZTowards robust context-sensitive sentence alignment for monolingual corporaShieber, StuartNelken, Ranihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22525972015-04-30T01:13:10Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZTowards robust context-sensitive sentence alignment for monolingual corpora
Shieber, Stuart; Nelken, Rani
Aligning sentences belonging to comparable monolingual corpora has been suggested as a first step towards training text rewriting algorithms, for tasks such as summarization or paraphrasing. We present here a new monolingual sentence alignment algorithm, combining a sentence-based TF*IDF score, turned into a probability distribution using logistic regression, with a global alignment dynamic programming algorithm. Our approach provides a simpler and more robust solution achieving a substantial improvement in accuracy over existing systems.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZSimpler TAG semantics through synchronizationShieber, StuartNesson, Rebeccahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22525952015-04-30T01:13:11Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZSimpler TAG semantics through synchronization
Shieber, Stuart; Nesson, Rebecca
In recent years Laura Kallmeyer, Maribel Romero, and their collaborators
have led research on TAG semantics through a series of papers refining a system of TAG semantics computation. Kallmeyer and Romero bring together the lessons of these attempts with a set of desirable properties that such a
system should have. First, computation of the semantics of a sentence should rely only on the relationships expressed in the TAG derivation tree. Second, the generated semantics should compactly represent all valid interpretations of the input sentence, in particular with respect to quantifier scope. Third, the formalism should not, if possible, increase the expressivity of the TAG formalism. We revive the proposal of using synchronous TAG (STAG) to simultaneously generate syntactic and semantic representations for an input sentence. Although STAG meets the three requirements above, no serious attempt had previously been made to determine whether it can model the
semantic constructions that have proved difficult for other approaches. In this paper we begin exploration of this question by proposing STAG analyses of many of the hard cases that have spurred the research in this area. We reframe the TAG semantics problem in the context of the STAG formalism
and in the process present a simple, intuitive base for further exploration of TAG semantics. We provide analyses that demonstrate how STAG can handle quantifier scope, long-distance WH-movement, interaction of raising verbs and adverbs, attitude verbs and quantifiers, relative clauses, and quantifiers
within prepositional phrases.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZComputing The Kullback-Leibler Divergence Between Probabilistic Automata Using Rational KernelsNelken, RaniShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:240197912017-07-28T08:00:20Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZComputing The Kullback-Leibler Divergence Between Probabilistic Automata Using Rational Kernels
Nelken, Rani; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
Kullback-Leibler divergence is a natural distance measure between two probabilistic finite-state automata. Computing this distance is difficult, since it requires a summation over a countably infinite number of strings. Nederhof and Satta (2004) recently provided a solution in the course of solving the more general problem of finding the cross-entropy between a probabilistic context-free grammar and an unambiguous probabilistic automaton. We propose a novel solution for two unambiguous probabilistic automata, by showing that Kullback-Leibler divergence can be defined as a rational kernel (Cortes et al., 2004) over the expectation semiring (Eisner, 2002). Using this definition, the computation is performed using the general algorithm for rational kernels, yielding an elegant and efficient solution.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZRepresentation in stochastic search for phylogenetictree reconstructionShieber, StuartOhno-Machado, LucilaWeber, Griffinhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20316712015-04-30T01:13:02Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZRepresentation in stochastic search for phylogenetictree reconstruction
Shieber, Stuart; Ohno-Machado, Lucila; Weber, Griffin
Phylogenetic tree reconstruction is a process in which the ancestral relationships among a group of organisms are inferred from their DNA sequences. For all but trivial sized data sets, ﬁnding the optimal tree is computationally intractable. Many heuristic algorithms exist, but the branch-swapping algorithm used in the software package PAUP is the most popular. This method performs a stochastic search over the space of trees, using a branch-swapping operation to construct neighboring trees in the search space. This study introduces a new stochastic search algorithm that operates over an alternative representation of trees, namely as permutations of taxa giving the order in which they are processed during stepwise addition. Experiments on several data sets suggest that this algorithm for generating an initial tree, when followed by branch-swapping, can produce better trees for a given total amount of time.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZReferring-expression generation using a transformation-based learning approachNickerson, JillShieber, StuartGrosz, Barbarahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526082015-04-30T01:13:07Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZReferring-expression generation using a transformation-based learning approach
Nickerson, Jill; Shieber, Stuart; Grosz, Barbara
A natural language generation system must generate expressions that allow a reader to identify the entities to which they refer. This paper describes the creation of referring-expression (RE) generation models developed using a transformation-based learning approach. We present an evaluation of the learned models and compare their performance to the performance of a baseline system, which always generates full noun phrase REs. When compared to the baseline system, the learned models produce REs that lead to more coherent natural language documents and are more accurate and closer in length to those that people use.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZPractical secrecy-preserving, verifiably correct and trustworthy auctions.Shieber, StuartParkes, DavidRabin, MichaelThorpe, Christopherhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526062015-04-30T01:13:06Z2006-01-01T00:00:00ZPractical secrecy-preserving, verifiably correct and trustworthy auctions.
Shieber, Stuart; Parkes, David; Rabin, Michael; Thorpe, Christopher
We present a practical system for conducting sealed-bid auctions that preserves the secrecy of the bids while providing for verifiable correctness and trustworthiness of the auction. The auctioneer must accept all bids submitted and follow the published rules of the auction. No party receives any useful information about bids before the auction closes and no bidder is able to change or repudiate her bid. Our solution uses Paillier's homomorphic encryption scheme [25] for zero knowledge proofs of correctness. Only minimal cryptographic technology is required of bidders; instead of employing complex interactive protocols or multi-party computation, the single auctioneer computes optimal auction results and publishes proofs of the results' correctness. Any party can check these proofs of correctness via publicly verifiable computations on encrypted bids. The system is illustrated through application to first-price, uniform-price and second-price auctions, including multi-item auctions. Our empirical results demonstrate the practicality of our method: auctions with hundreds of bidders are within reach of a single PC, while a modest distributed computing network can accommodate auctions with thousands of bids.
2006-01-01T00:00:00ZArabic diacritization using weighted finite-state transducersShieber, StuartNelken, Ranihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526102015-04-30T01:13:08Z2005-01-01T00:00:00ZArabic diacritization using weighted finite-state transducers
Shieber, Stuart; Nelken, Rani
Arabic is usually written without short vowels and additional diacritics, which are nevertheless important for several applications. We present a novel algorithm for restoring these symbols, using a cascade of probabilistic finite- state transducers trained on the Arabic treebank, integrating a word-based language model, a letter-based language model, and an extremely simple morphological model. This combination of probabilistic methods and simple linguistic information yields high levels of accuracy.
2005-01-01T00:00:00ZComputing the communication costs of item allocationRauenbusch, Timothy W.Grosz, BarbaraShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20944402015-04-30T01:13:10Z2005-01-01T00:00:00ZComputing the communication costs of item allocation
Rauenbusch, Timothy W.; Grosz, Barbara; Shieber, Stuart
Multiagent systems require techniques for effectively allocating resources or tasks to among agents in a group. Auctions are one method for structuring communication of agents’ private values for the resource or task to a central decision maker. Different auction methods vary in their communication requirements. This paper makes three contributions to the understanding the types of group decision making for which auctions are appropriate methods. First, it shows that entropy is the best measure of communication bandwidth used by an auction in messages bidders send and receive. Second, it presents a method for measuring bandwidth usage; the dialogue trees used for this computation are a new and compact representation of the probability distribution of every possible dialogue between two agents. Third, it presents new guidelines for choosing the best auction, guidelines which differ significantly from recommendations in prior work. The new guidelines are based on detailed analysis of the communication requirements of Sealed-bid, Dutch, Staged, Japanese, and Bisection auctions. In contradistinction to previous work, the guidelines show that the auction that minimizes bandwidth depends on both the number of bidders and the sample space from which bidders’ valuations are drawn.
2005-01-01T00:00:00ZInduction of Probabilistic Synchronous Tree-Insertion GrammarsNesson, RebeccaShieber, Stuart MerrillRush, Alexander Matthewhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:258110062017-07-28T08:10:47Z2005-01-01T00:00:00ZInduction of Probabilistic Synchronous Tree-Insertion Grammars
Nesson, Rebecca; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Rush, Alexander Matthew
Increasingly, researchers developing statistical machine translation systems have moved to incorporate syntactic structure in the models that they induce. These researchers are motivated by the intuition that the limitations in the finite-state translation models exemplified by IBM’s “Model 5” follow from the inability to use phrasal and hierarchical information in the interlingual mapping. What is desired is a formalism that has the substitution-based hierarchical structure provided by context-free grammars, with the lexical relationship potential of n-gram models, with processing efficiency no worse than CFGs. Further, it should ideally allow for discontinuity in phrases, and be synchronizable, to allow for multilinguality. Finally, in order to support automated induction, it should allow for a probabilistic variant. We introduce probabilistic synchronous tree-insertion grammars (PSTIG) as such a formalism. In this paper, we define a restricted version of PSTIG, and provide algorithms for parsing, parameter estimation, and translation. As a proof of concept, we successfully apply these algorithms to a toy problem, corpus-based induction of a statistical translator of arithmetic expressions from postfix to partially parenthesized infix.
2005-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous grammars as tree transducersShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20193222015-04-30T01:13:06Z2004-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous grammars as tree transducers
Shieber, Stuart
Tree transducer formalisms were developed in the formal language theory community as generalizations of finite-state transducers from strings to trees. Independently, synchronous tree-substitution and -adjoining grammars arose in the computational linguistics community as a means to augment strictly syntactic formalisms to provide for parallel semantics. We present the first synthesis of these two independently developed approaches to specifying tree relations, unifying their respective literatures for the first time, by using the framework of bimorphisms as the generalizing formalism in which all can be embedded. The central result is that synchronous tree-substitution grammars are equivalent to bimorphisms where the component homomorphisms are linear and complete.
2004-01-01T00:00:00ZUnifying annotated discourse hierarchies to create a gold standardCarbone, MarcoShieber, StuartGal, Ya'akov Kobihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526112015-04-30T01:13:10Z2004-01-01T00:00:00ZUnifying annotated discourse hierarchies to create a gold standard
Carbone, Marco; Shieber, Stuart; Gal, Ya'akov Kobi
Human annotation of discourse corpora typically results in segmentation hierarchies that vary in their degree of agreement. This paper presents several techniques for unifying multiple discourse annotations into a single hierarchy, deemed a “gold standard ” — the segmentation that best captures the underlying linguistic structure of the discourse. It proposes and analyzes methods that consider the level of embeddedness of a segmentation as well as methods that do not. A corpus containing annotated hierarchical discourses, the Boston Directions Corpus, was used to evaluate the “goodness” of each technique, by comparing the similarity of the segmentation it derives to the original annotations in the corpus. Several metrics of similarity between hierarchical segmentations are computed: precision/recall of matching utterances, pairwise inter-reliability scores ( ¡), and non-crossing-brackets. A novel method for unification that minimizes conflicts among annotators outperforms methods that require consensus among a majority for the ¡ and recall metrics, while capturing much of the structure of the discourse. When higher recall is preferred, methods requiring a majority are preferable to those that demand full consensus among annotators.
2004-01-01T00:00:00ZA learning approach to improving sentence-level MT evaluationShieber, StuartKulesza, Alexhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22525982015-04-30T01:13:09Z2004-01-01T00:00:00ZA learning approach to improving sentence-level MT evaluation
Shieber, Stuart; Kulesza, Alex
The problem of evaluating machine translation (MT) systems is more challenging than it may first appear, as diverse translations can often be considered equally correct. The task is even more difficult when practical circumstances require that evaluation be done automatically over short texts, for instance, during incremental system development and error analysis. While several automatic metrics, such as BLEU, have been proposed and adopted for largescale MT system discrimination, they all fail to achieve satisfactory levels of correlation with human judgments at the sentence level. Here, a new class of metrics based on machine learning is introduced. A novel method involving classifying translations as machine or humanproduced rather than directly predicting numerical human judgments eliminates the need for labor-intensive user studies as a source of training data. The resulting metric, based on support vector machines, is shown to significantly improve upon current automatic metrics, increasing correlation with human judgments at the sentence level halfway toward that achieved by an independent human evaluator.
2004-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to GrammarShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:115767192015-04-30T01:13:14Z2003-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar
Shieber, Stuart M.
2003-01-01T00:00:00ZAbbreviated text inputShieber, StuartBaker, Elliehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526122015-04-30T01:13:09Z2003-01-01T00:00:00ZAbbreviated text input
Shieber, Stuart; Baker, Ellie
We address the problem of improving the efficiency of natural language text input under degraded conditions (for instance, on PDAs or cell phones or by disabled users) by taking advantage of the informational redundacy in natural language. Previous approaches to this problem have been based on the idea of prediction of the text, but these require the user to take overt action to verify or select the system's predictions. We propose taking advantage of the duality between prediction and compression. We allow the user to enter text in compressed form, in particular, using a simple stipulated abbreviation method that reduces characters by about 30% yet is simple enough that it can be learned easily and generated relatively fluently. Using statistical language processing techniques, we can decode the abbreviated text with a residual word error rate of about 3%, and we expect that simple adaptive methods can improve this to about 1.5%. Because the system's operation is completely independent from the user's, the overhead from cognitive task switching and attending to the system's actions online is eliminated, opening up the possibility that the compression-based method can achieve text input efficiency improvements where the prediction-based methods have not.
2003-01-01T00:00:00ZComma restoration using constituency informationTao, XiaopengShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20944422015-04-30T01:13:05Z2003-01-01T00:00:00ZComma restoration using constituency information
Tao, Xiaopeng; Shieber, Stuart
Automatic restoration of punctuation from unpunctuated text has application in improving the fluency and applicability of speech recognition systems. We explore the possibility that syntactic information can be used to improve the performance of an HMM-based system for restoring punctuation (specifically, commas) in text. Our best methods reduce sentence error rate substantially - by some 20%, with an additional 8% reduction possible given improvements in extraction of the requisite syntactic information.
2003-01-01T00:00:00ZPartially ordered multiset context-free grammars and ID/LP parsingNederhof, Mark-JanShieber, StuartSatta, Giorgiohttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22525992015-04-30T01:13:06Z2003-01-01T00:00:00ZPartially ordered multiset context-free grammars and ID/LP parsing
Nederhof, Mark-Jan; Shieber, Stuart; Satta, Giorgio
We present a new formalism, partially ordered multiset context-free grammars (poms-CFG), along with an Earley-style parsing algorithm. The formalism, which can be thought of as a generalization of context-free grammars with partially ordered right-hand sides, is of interest in its own right, and also as infrastructure for obtaining tighter complexity bounds for more expressive context-free formalisms intended to express free or multiple word-order, such as ID/LP grammars. We reduce ID/LP grammars to poms-grammars, thereby getting finer-grained bounds on the parsing complexity of ID/LP grammars. We argue that in practice, the width of attested ID/LP grammars is small, yielding effectively polynomial time complexity for ID/LP grammar parsing.
2003-01-01T00:00:00ZThe LinGO redwoods treebank: Motivation and preliminary applicationsBrants, ThorstenFlickinger, DanManning, ChristopherShieber, StuartToutanova, KristinaOepen, Stephanhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526132015-04-30T01:13:07Z2002-01-01T00:00:00ZThe LinGO redwoods treebank: Motivation and preliminary applications
Brants, Thorsten; Flickinger, Dan; Manning, Christopher; Shieber, Stuart; Toutanova, Kristina; Oepen, Stephan
The LinGO Redwoods initiative is a seed activity in the design and development of a new type of treebank. While several medium- to large-scale treebanks exist for English (and for other major languages), pre-existing publicly available resources exhibit the following limitations: (i) annotation is mono-stratal, either encoding topological (phrase structure) or tectogrammatical (dependency) information, (ii) the depth of linguistic information recorded is comparatively shallow, (iii) the design and format of linguistic representation in the treebank hard-wires a small, predefined range of ways in which information can be extracted from the treebank, and (iv) representations in existing treebanks are static and over the (often year- or decade-long) evolution of a large-scale treebank tend to fall behind the development of the field. LinGO Redwoods aims at the development of a novel treebanking methodology, rich in nature and dynamic both in the ways linguistic data can be retrieved from the treebank in varying granularity and in the constant evolution and regular updating of the treebank itself. Since October 2001, the project is working to build the foundations for this new type of treebank, to develop a basic set of tools for treebank construction and maintenance, and to construct an initial set of 10,000 annotated trees to be distributed together with the tools under an open-source license.
2002-01-01T00:00:00ZParse disambiguation for a rich HPSG grammarOepen, StephanFlickinger, DanManning, ChristopherShieber, StuartToutanova, Kristinahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526042015-04-30T01:13:09Z2002-01-01T00:00:00ZParse disambiguation for a rich HPSG grammar
Oepen, Stephan; Flickinger, Dan; Manning, Christopher; Shieber, Stuart; Toutanova, Kristina
2002-01-01T00:00:00ZA writer's collaborative assistantBabaian, TamaraShieber, StuartGrosz, Barbarahttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22526002015-04-30T01:13:02Z2002-01-01T00:00:00ZA writer's collaborative assistant
Babaian, Tamara; Shieber, Stuart; Grosz, Barbara
In traditional human-computer interfaces, a human master directs a computer system as a servant, telling it not only what to do, but also how to do it. Collaborative interfaces attempt to realign the roles, making the participants collaborators in solving the person's problem. This paper describes Writer's Aid, a system that deploys AI planning techniques to enable it to serve as an author's collaborative assistant. Writer's Aid differs from previous collaborative interfaces in both the kinds of actions the system partner takes and the underlying technology it uses to do so. While an author writes a document, Writer's Aid helps in identifying and inserting citation keys and by autonomously finding and caching potentially relevant papers and their associated bibliographic information from various on-line sources. This autonomy, enabled by the use of a planning system at the core of Writer's Aid, distinguishes this system from other collaborative interfaces. The collaborative design and its division of labor result in more efficient operation: faster and easier writing on the user's part and more effective information gathering on the part of the system. Subjects in our laboratory user study found the system effective and the interface intuitive and easy to use.
2002-01-01T00:00:00ZSeed-Growth Heuristics for Graph BisectionRuml, WheelerMarks, JoeShieber, Stuart MerrillNgo, J. Thomashttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:251047352017-07-28T08:12:13Z1999-01-01T00:00:00ZSeed-Growth Heuristics for Graph Bisection
Ruml, Wheeler; Marks, Joe; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Ngo, J. Thomas
We investigate a family of algorithms for graph bisection that are based on a simple local connectivity heuristic, which we call seed-growth. We show how the heuristic can be combined with stochastic search procedures and a postprocess application of the Kernighan-Lin algorithm. In a series of time-equated comparisons against large-sample runs of pure Kernighan-Lin, the new algorithms find bisections of the same or superior quality. Their performance is particularly good on structured graphs representing important industrial applications. An appendix provides further favorable comparisons to other published results. Our experimental methodology and extensive empirical results provide a solid foundation for further empirical investigation of graph-bisection algorithms.
1999-01-01T00:00:00ZSpeculative Pruning for Boolean SatisfiabilityRuml, WheelerGinsburg, AdamShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:235187992017-07-28T08:02:13Z1999-01-01T00:00:00ZSpeculative Pruning for Boolean Satisfiability
Ruml, Wheeler; Ginsburg, Adam; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
Much recent work on boolean satisfiability has focussed on incomplete algorithms that sacrifice accuracy for improved running time. Statistical predictors of satisfiability do not return actual satisfying assignments, but at least two have been developed that run in linear time. Search algorithms allow increased accuracy with additional running time, and can return satisfying assignments. The efficient search algorithms have been proposed are based on iteratively improving a random assignment, in effect searching a graph of degree equal to the number of variables. In this paper, we examine an incomplete algorithm based on searching a standard binary tree, in which statistical predictors are used to speculatively prune the tree in constant time. Experimental evaluation on hard random instances shows it to be the first practical incomplete algorithm based on tree search, surpassing even graph-based methods on smaller instances.
1999-01-01T00:00:00ZA seed-growth heuristic for graph bisectionNgo, J. ThomasShieber, StuartRuml, WheelerMarks, Joehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22608402015-04-30T01:13:07Z1998-01-01T00:00:00ZA seed-growth heuristic for graph bisection
Ngo, J. Thomas; Shieber, Stuart; Ruml, Wheeler; Marks, Joe
We present a new heuristic algorithm for graph bisection, based on an implicit notion of clustering. We describe how the heuristic can be combined with stochastic search procedures and a postprocess application of the Kernighan-Lin algorithm. In a series of time-equated comparisons with large-sample runs of pure Kernighan-Lin, the new algorithm demonstrates significant superiority in terms of the best bisections found.
1998-01-01T00:00:00ZAutomatic yellow-pages pagination and layoutMarks, JoeShieber, StuartJohari, RameshPartovi, Alihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317132015-04-30T01:13:08Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZAutomatic yellow-pages pagination and layout
Marks, Joe; Shieber, Stuart; Johari, Ramesh; Partovi, Ali
The compact and harmonious layout of ads and text is a fundamental and costly step in the production of commercial telephone directories (ldquoYellow Pagesrdquo). We formulate a canonical version of Yellow-Pages pagination and layout (YPPL) as an optimization problem in which the task is to position ads and text-stream segments on sequential pages so as to minimize total page length and maximize certain layout aesthetics, subject to constraints derived from page-format requirements and positional relations between ads and text. We present a heuristic-search approach to the YPPL problem. Our algorithm has been applied to a sample of real telephone-directory data, and produces solutions that are significantly shorter and better than the published ones.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZEmpirical testing of algorithms for variable-sized label placementMarks, JoeFriedman, StacyChristensen, JonShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22588662015-04-30T01:13:09Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZEmpirical testing of algorithms for variable-sized label placement
Marks, Joe; Friedman, Stacy; Christensen, Jon; Shieber, Stuart
We report an empirical comparison of different heuristic techniques for variable-sized point-feature label placement.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZDesign gallery browsers based on 2D and 3D graph drawingMarks, JoeRuml, WheelerAndalman, BradRyall, KathyShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652842015-04-30T01:13:10Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZDesign gallery browsers based on 2D and 3D graph drawing
Marks, Joe; Ruml, Wheeler; Andalman, Brad; Ryall, Kathy; Shieber, Stuart
Many problems in computer-aided design and graphics involve the process of setting and adjusting input parameters to obtain desirable output values. Exploring different parameter settings can be a difficult and tedious task in most such systems. In the Design GalleryTM (DG) approach, parameter setting is made easier by dividing the task more equitably between user and computer. DG interfaces present the user with the broadest selection, automatically generated and organized, of perceptually different designs that can be produced by varying a given set of input parameters. The DG approach has been applied to several difficult parameter-setting tasks from the field of computer graphics: light selection and placement for image rendering; opacity and color transfer-function specification for volume rendering; and motion control for articulated-figure and particle-system animation. The principal technical challenges posed by the DG approach are dispersion (finding a set of input-parameter vectors that optimally disperses the resulting output values) and arrangement (arranging the resulting designs for easy browsing by the user). We show how effective arrangement can be achieved with 2D and 3D graph drawing. While navigation is easier in the 2D interface, the 3D interface has proven to be surprisingly usable, and the 3D drawings sometimes provide insights that are not so obvious in the 2D drawings.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZAn interactive constraint-based system for drawing graphsMarks, JoeRyall, KathyShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22588672015-04-30T01:13:05Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZAn interactive constraint-based system for drawing graphs
Marks, Joe; Ryall, Kathy; Shieber, Stuart
The glide system is an interactive constraint-based editor for drawing small- and medium-sized graphs (50 nodes or fewer) that organizes the interaction in a more collaborative manner than in previous systems. Its distinguishing features are a vocabulary of specialized constraints for graph drawing, and a simple constraintsatisfaction mechanism that allows the user to manipulate the drawing while the constraints are active. These features result in a graph-drawing editor that is superior in many ways to those based on more general and powerful constraint-satisfaction methods.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZAnaphoric dependencies in ellipsisShieber, StuartKehler, Andrewhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317142015-04-30T01:13:04Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZAnaphoric dependencies in ellipsis
Shieber, Stuart; Kehler, Andrew
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZDesign Galleries: A general approach to setting parameters for computer graphics and animationGibson, SarahBeardsley, PaulRuml, WheelerKang, ThomasMirtich, BrianSeims, JoshuaFreeman, WilliamHodgins, JessicaPfister, HanspeterMarks, JoeAndalman, BradShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652852015-04-30T01:13:10Z1997-01-01T00:00:00ZDesign Galleries: A general approach to setting parameters for computer graphics and animation
Gibson, Sarah; Beardsley, Paul; Ruml, Wheeler; Kang, Thomas; Mirtich, Brian; Seims, Joshua; Freeman, William; Hodgins, Jessica; Pfister, Hanspeter; Marks, Joe; Andalman, Brad; Shieber, Stuart
Image rendering maps scene parameters to output pixel values; animation maps motion-control parameters to trajectory values. Because these mapping functions are usually multidimensional, nonlinear, and discontinuous, finding input parameters that yield desirable output values is often a painful process of manual tweaking. Interactive evolution and inverse design are two general methodologies for computer-assisted parameter setting in which the computer plays a prominent role. In this paper we present another such methodology: Design Gallery TM (DG) interfaces present the user with the broadest selection--- automatically generated and organized--- of perceptually different graphics or animations that can be produced by varying a given input-parameter vector. The principal technical challenges posed by the DG approach are dispersion, finding a set of input-parameter vectors that optimally disperses the resulting output-value vectors, and arrangement, organizing the resulting graphics for easy and intuitive browsing by the user. We describe the use of DGs for several parametersetting problems: light selection and placement for image rendering, both standard and image-based; opacity and color transfer-function specification for volume rendering; and motion control for particle-system and articulated-figure animation.
1997-01-01T00:00:00ZA call for collaborative interfacesShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324672015-04-30T01:13:04Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZA call for collaborative interfaces
Shieber, Stuart
In this note, I call for a move towards viewing interfaces as means for people and computers to collaborate on solving problems rather than means for people to control computers. This collaborative perspective on user interfaces can apply quite broadly, and not only provides a source for novel interface techniques but serves as a good tool for analyzing existing interfaces. The view affects thinking on interfaces primarily by motivating a different split in the roles and responsibilities of the two participants in problem-solving, the computer and the user.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZA general cartographic labeling algorithmEdmondson, ShawnShieber, StuartChristensen, JonMarks, Joehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20513702015-04-30T01:13:07Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZA general cartographic labeling algorithm
Edmondson, Shawn; Shieber, Stuart; Christensen, Jon; Marks, Joe
Some apparently powerful algorithms for automatic label placement on maps use heuristics that capture considerable cartographic expertise but are hampered by provably inefficient methods of search and optimization. On the other hand, no approach to label placement that is based on an efficient optimization technique has been applied to the production of general cartographic maps - those with labeled point, line, and area features - and shown to generate labelings of acceptable quality. We present an algorithm for label placement that achieves the twin goals of practical efficiency and high labeling quality by combining simple cartographic heuristics with effective stochastic optimization techniques.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZPredicting individual book use for off-site storage using decision treesShieber, StuartSilverstein, Craighttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317182015-04-30T01:13:01Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZPredicting individual book use for off-site storage using decision trees
Shieber, Stuart; Silverstein, Craig
We explore various methods for predicting library book use, as measured by circulation records. Accurate prediction is invaluable when choosing titles to be stored in an off-site location. Previous researchers in this area concluded that past use information provides by far the most reliable predictor of future use. Because of the computerization of library data, it is now possible not only to reproduce these earlier experiments with a more substantial data set, but also to compare their algorithms with more sophisticated decision methods. We have found that while previous use is indeed an excellent predictor of future use, it can be improved upon by combining previous use information with bibliographic information in a technique that can be customized for individual collections. This has immediate application for libraries that are short on storage space and wish to identify low-demand titles to move to remote storage. For instance, simulations show that the best prediction method we develop, when used as the off-site storage selection method for the Harvard College Library, would have generated only a fifth as many off-site accesses as compared to a method based on previous use.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZAn interactive system for drawing graphsMarks, JoeShieber, StuartRyall, Kathyhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652892015-04-30T01:13:10Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZAn interactive system for drawing graphs
Marks, Joe; Shieber, Stuart; Ryall, Kathy
Abstract: In spite of great advances in the automatic drawing of medium and large graphs, the tools available for drawing small graphs exquisitely (that is, with the aesthetics commonly found in professional publications and presentations) are still very primitive. Commercial tools, e.g., Claris Draw, provide minimal support for aesthetic graph layout. At the other extreme, research prototypes based on constraint methods are overly general for graph drawing. Our system improves on general constraint-based approaches to drawing and layout by supporting only a small set of “macro” constraints that are specifically suited to graph drawing. These constraints are enforced by a generalized spring algorithm. The result is a usable and useful tool for drawing small graphs easily and nicely.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZA viewer for PostScript documentsShieber, StuartMarks, JoeGinsburg, Adamhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652902015-04-30T01:13:08Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZA viewer for PostScript documents
Shieber, Stuart; Marks, Joe; Ginsburg, Adam
We describe a PostScript viewer that provides navigation and annotation functionality similar to that of paper documents using simple unified user-interface techniques.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZInteractions of scope and ellipsisPereira, Fernando C. N.Dalrymple, MaryShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317152015-04-30T01:13:03Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZInteractions of scope and ellipsis
Pereira, Fernando C. N.; Dalrymple, Mary; Shieber, Stuart
Systematic semantic ambiguities result from the interaction of the two operations that are involved in resolving ellipsis in the presence of scoping elements such as quantifiers and intensional operators: scope determination for the scoping elements and resolution of the elided relation. A variety of problematic examples previously noted - by Sag, Hirschbüihler, Gawron and Peters, Harper, and others - all have to do with such interactions. In previous work, we showed how ellipsis resolution can be stated and solved in equational terms. Furthermore, this equational analysis of ellipsis provides a uniform framework in which interactions between ellipsis resolution and scope determination can be captured. As a consequence, an account of the problematic examples follows directly from the equational method. The goal of this paper is merely to point out this pleasant aspect of the equational analysis, through its application to these cases. No new analytical methods or associated formalism are presented, with the exception of a straightforward extension of the equational method to intensional logic.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZEasily searched encodings for number partitioningShieber, StuartMarks, JoeNgo, J. ThomasRuml, Wheelerhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317172015-04-30T01:13:07Z1996-01-01T00:00:00ZEasily searched encodings for number partitioning
Shieber, Stuart; Marks, Joe; Ngo, J. Thomas; Ruml, Wheeler
Can stochastic search algorithms outperform existing deterministic heuristics for the NP-hard problem Number Partitioning if given a sufficient, but practically realizable amount of time? In a thorough empirical investigation using a straightforward implementation of one such algorithm, simulated annealing, Johnson et al. (Ref. 1) concluded tentatively that the answer is negative.
In this paper, we show that the answer can be positive if attention is devoted to the issue of problem representation (encoding). We present results from empirical tests of several encodings of Number Partitioning with problem instances consisting of multiple-precision integers drawn from a uniform probability distribution. With these instances and with an appropriate choice of representation, stochastic and deterministic searches can—routinely and in a practical amount of time—find solutions several orders of magnitude better than those constructed by the best heuristic known (Ref. 2), which does not employ searching.
We thank David S. Johnson of AT&T Bell Labs for generously and promptly sharing his test instances. For stimulating discussions, we thank members of the Harvard Animation/Optimization Group (especially Jon Christensen), the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Berkeley CAD Group. The anonymous referees made numerous constructive suggestions. We thank Rebecca Hayes for comments concerning the figures. The second author is grateful for a Graduate Fellowship from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. We thank the Free Software Foundation for making the GNU Multiple Precision package available.
The research described in this paper was conducted mostly while the third author was at Digital Equipment Corporation Cambridge Research Lab. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, principally under Grants IRI-9157996 and IRI-9350192 to the fourth author, and by matching grants from Digital Equipment Corporation and Xerox Corporation.
1996-01-01T00:00:00ZSemi-automatic Delineation of Regions in Floor PlansShieber, StuartMazer, MurrayMarks, JoeRyall, Kathyhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652882015-04-30T01:13:12Z1995-01-01T00:00:00ZSemi-automatic Delineation of Regions in Floor Plans
Shieber, Stuart; Mazer, Murray; Marks, Joe; Ryall, Kathy
We propose a technique that uses a proximity metric for delineating partially or fully bounded regions of a scanned bitmap that depicts a building floor plan. A proximity field is defined over the bitmap, which is used both to identify the centers of subjective regions in the image and to assign pixels to regions by proximity. The region boundaries generated by the method tend to match well the subjective boundaries of regions in the image. We discuss incorporation of the technique in a semi-automated interactive system for region identification in floor plans. In contrast to area-filling techniques for delineating areal regions of images, our approach works robustly for partially bounded regions. Furthermore, the frailties of the method that do remain, unlike those of alternative techniques, are well-moderated by simple human intervention.
1995-01-01T00:00:00ZAn empirical study of algorithms for point feature label placementChristensen, JonShieber, StuartMarks, Joehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20326782015-04-30T01:13:03Z1995-01-01T00:00:00ZAn empirical study of algorithms for point feature label placement
Christensen, Jon; Shieber, Stuart; Marks, Joe
A major factor affecting the clarity of graphical displays that include text labels is the degree to which labels obscure display features (including other labels) as a result of spatial overlap. Point-feature label placement (PFLP) is the problem of placing text labels adjacent to point features on a map or diagram so as to maximize legibility. This problem occurs frequently in the production of many types of informational graphics, though it arises most often in automated cartography. In this paper we present a comprehensive treatment of the PFLP problem, viewed as a type of combinatorial optimization problem. Complexity analysis reveals that the basic PFLP problem and most interesting variants of it are NP-hard. These negative results help inform a survey of previously reported algorithms for PFLP; not surprisingly, all such algorithms either have exponential time complexity or are incomplete. To solve the PFLP problem in practice, then, we must rely on good heuristic methods. We propose two new methods, one based on a discrete form of gradient descent, the other on simulated annealing, and report on a series of empirical tests comparing these and the other known algorithms for the problem. Based on this study, the first to be conducted, we identify the best approaches as a function of available computation time.
1995-01-01T00:00:00ZPrinciples and implementation of deductive parsingShieber, StuartPereira, Fernando C. N.Schabes, Yveshttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20317162015-04-30T01:13:08Z1995-01-01T00:00:00ZPrinciples and implementation of deductive parsing
Shieber, Stuart; Pereira, Fernando C. N.; Schabes, Yves
We present a system for generating parsers based directly on the metaphor of parsing as deduction. Parsing algorithms can be represented directly as deduction systems, and a single deduction engine can interpret such deduction systems so as to implement the corresponding parser. The method generalizes easily to parsers for augmented phrase structure formalisms, such as definite-clause grammars and other logic grammar formalisms, and has been used for rapid prototyping of parsing algorithms for a variety of formalisms including variants of tree-adjoining grammars, categorial grammars, and lexicalized context-free grammars.
1995-01-01T00:00:00ZLessons from a restricted Turing testShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20326772015-04-30T01:13:06Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZLessons from a restricted Turing test
Shieber, Stuart
We report on the recent Loebner prize competition inspired by Turing's test of intelligent behavior. The presentation covers the structure of the competition and the outcome of its first instantiation in an actual event, and an analysis of the purpose, design, and appropriateness of such a competition. We argue that the competition has no clear purpose, that its design prevents any useful outcome, and that such a competition is inappropriate given the current level of technology. We then speculate as to suitable alternatives to the Loebner prize.
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZAutomating the layout of network diagrams with specified visual organization.Kosak, CoreyShieber, StuartMarks, Joehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324662015-04-30T01:13:02Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZAutomating the layout of network diagrams with specified visual organization.
Kosak, Corey; Shieber, Stuart; Marks, Joe
Network diagrams are a familiar graphic form that can express many different kinds of information. The problem of automating network-diagram layout has therefore received much attention. Previous research on network-diagram layout has focused on the problem of aesthetically optimal layout, using such criteria as the number of link crossings, the sum of all link lengths, and total diagram area. In this paper the authors propose a restatement of the network-diagram layout problem in which layout-aesthetic concerns are subordinated to perceptual-organization concerns. The authors present a notation for describing the visual organization of a network diagram. This notation is used in reformulating the layout task as a constrained-optimization problem in which constraints are derived from a visual-organization specification and optimality criteria are derived from layout-aesthetic considerations. Two new heuristic algorithms are presented for this version of the layout problem: one algorithm uses a rule-based strategy for computing a layout; the other is a massively parallel genetic algorithm. The authors demonstrate the capabilities of the two algorithms by testing them on a variety of network-diagram layout problems.
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Alternative Conception of Tree-Adjoining DerivationShieber, StuartSchabes, Yveshttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324692015-04-30T01:13:12Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Alternative Conception of Tree-Adjoining Derivation
Shieber, Stuart; Schabes, Yves
The precise formulation of derivation for tree-adjoining grammars has important ramifications for a wide variety of uses of the formalism, from syntactic analysis to semantic interpretation and statistical language modeling. We argue that the definition of tree-adjoining derivation must be reformulated in order to manifest the proper linguistic dependencies in derivations. The particular proposal is both precisely characterizable through a definition of TAG derivations as equivalence classes of ordered derivation trees, and computationally operational, by virtue of a compilation to linear indexed grammars together with an efficient algorithm for recognition and parsing according to the compiled grammar.
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZRestricting the weak-generative capacity of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars.Shieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324652016-06-21T20:55:21Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZRestricting the weak-generative capacity of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars.
Shieber, Stuart
The formalism of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars, a variant of standard tree-adjoining grammars (TAG), was intended to allow the use of TAGs for language transduction in addition to language specification. In previous work, the definition of the transduction relation defined by a synchronous TAG was given by appeal to an iterative rewriting process. The rewriting definition of derivation is problematic in that it greatly extends the expressivity of the formalism and makes the design of parsing algorithms difficult if not impossible. We introduce a simple, natural definition of synchronous tree-adjoining derivation, based on isomorphisms between standard tree-adjoining derivations, that avoids the expressivity and implementability problems of the original rewriting definition. The decrease in expressivity, which would otherwise make the method unusable, is offset by the incorporation of an alternative definition of standard tree-adjoining derivation, previously proposed for completely separate reasons, thereby making it practical to entertain using the natural definition of synchronous derivation. Nonetheless, some remaining problematic cases call for yet more flexibility in the definition; the isomorphism requirement may have to be relaxed. It remains for future research to tune the exact requirements on the allowable mappings.
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZA Recursive Coalescing Method for Bisecting GraphsMazlish, BryanShieber, Stuart MerrillMarks, Joehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:256194622017-07-28T08:02:59Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZA Recursive Coalescing Method for Bisecting Graphs
Mazlish, Bryan; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Marks, Joe
We present an extension to a hybrid graph-bisection algorithm developed by Bui et al. that uses vertex coalescing and the Kernighan-Lin variable-depth algorithm to minimize the size of the cut set. In the original heuristic technique, one iteration of vertex coalescing is used to improve the performance of the original Kernighan-Lin algorithm. We show that by performing vertex coalescing recursively, substantially greater improvements can be achieved for standard random graphs of average degree in the range [2:0; 5:0].
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZInfrastructure for Research towards Ubiquitous Information SystemsGrosz, Barbara J.Kung, H. T.Seltzer, Margo I.Shieber, Stuart MerrillSmith, Michael D.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:265064412017-07-28T07:55:19Z1994-01-01T00:00:00ZInfrastructure for Research towards Ubiquitous Information Systems
Grosz, Barbara J.; Kung, H. T.; Seltzer, Margo I.; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Smith, Michael D.
The availability of fast, inexpensive computers and the growth of network technology have resulted in the proliferation of computing power and an enormous increase in information available in electronic form. However, most of the information stored on computers is extremely difficult for the common person to obtain. Thus, a central challenge for computer science and engineering in the next decade is to create the scientific and technological base for large-scale and easy-to-use information systems. These systems must work together in a coherent and cohesive manner, providing shared information easily for the general user. We refer to these systems as systems for ubiquitous information. The development of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) amplifies the urgent needs for research in this area. We propose to develop a new generation computing facility to support experimental research in ubiquitous information systems. The research to be carried out using this facility spans from the development of new technologies that support the rapid transmission of large amounts of data between computer systems to the development of more flexible and adaptable systems for human-computer communication. The proposed infrastructure will include emerging equipment with new capabilities critical to this new research, such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks capable of guaranteeing performance, file servers capable of handling video, and graphics work-stations with advanced human interface capabilities. This equipment will supplement the basic computing and networking equipment typically found in computer science departments.
1994-01-01T00:00:00ZThe problem of logical-form equivalenceShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324702015-04-30T01:13:05Z1993-01-01T00:00:00ZThe problem of logical-form equivalence
Shieber, Stuart
1993-01-01T00:00:00ZVariations on incremental interpretationJohnson, MarkShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20324682015-04-30T01:13:06Z1993-01-01T00:00:00ZVariations on incremental interpretation
Johnson, Mark; Shieber, Stuart
The strict competence hypothesis has sparked a small dialogue among several researchers attempting to understand its ramifications for human sentence processing and incremental interpretation in particular. In this paper, we review the dialogue, reconstructing the arguments in an attempt to make them more uniform and crisp, and provide our own analyses of certain of the issues that arise. We argue that strict competence, because it requires a synchronous computation mechanism, may actually lead to more complex, rather than simpler, models of incremental interpretation. Asynchronous computation, which is arguably both psychologically more plausible and conceptually more basic, allows for incremental interpretation to fall out naturally, without additional machinery for interpreting partial constituents. We show that this is true regardless of whether the presumed interpretation mechanism is top-down or bottom-up, contra previous conclusions in the literature, and propose a particular implementation of some of these ideas using a novel representation based on tree-adjoining grammars.
The research in this paper was supported in part by grant IRI-9157996 from the National Science Foundation to the first author. The authors would like to thank Fernando Pereira, Edward Stabler, and Mark Steedman for discussions on the topic of this paper and for their comments on previous drafts.
1993-01-01T00:00:00ZAnnotating floor plans using deformable polygonsRyall, KathyMarks, JoeMazer, MurrayShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:265064382017-07-28T07:43:05Z1993-01-01T00:00:00ZAnnotating floor plans using deformable polygons
Ryall, Kathy; Marks, Joe; Mazer, Murray; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
The ability to recognize regions in a bitmap image has applications in various areas, from document recognition of scanned building floor plans to processing of scanned forms. We consider the use of deformable polygons for delineating partially or fully bounded regions of a scanned bitmap that depicts a building floor plan. We discuss a semi-automated interactive system, in which a user positions a seed polygon in an area of interest in the image. The computer then expands and deforms the polygon in an attempt to minimize an energy function that is defined so that configurations with minimum energy tend to match the subjective boundaries of regions in the image. When the deformation process is completed, the user may edit the deformed polygon to make it conform more closely to the desired region. In contrast to area-filling techniques for delineating areal regions of images, our approach works robustly for partially bounded regions.
1993-01-01T00:00:00ZAn alternative conception of tree-adjoining derivationShieber, StuartSchabes, Yveshttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20944412015-04-30T01:13:10Z1992-01-01T00:00:00ZAn alternative conception of tree-adjoining derivation
Shieber, Stuart; Schabes, Yves
The precise formulation of derivation for tree-adjoining grammars has important ramifications for a wide variety of uses of the formalism, from syntactic analysis to semantic interpretation and statistical language modeling. We argue that the definition of tree-adjoining derivation must be reformulated in order to manifest the proper linguistic dependencies in derivations. The particular proposal is both precisely characterizable, through a compilation to linear indexed grammars, and computationally operational, by virtue of an efficient algorithm for recognition and parsing.
1992-01-01T00:00:00ZRestricting the weak-generative capacity of synchronous tree-adjoining grammarsShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23096652015-04-30T01:13:04Z1992-01-01T00:00:00ZRestricting the weak-generative capacity of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars
Shieber, Stuart
The formalism of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars, a variant of standard tree-adjoining grammars (TAG), was intended to allow the use of TAGs for language transduction in addition to language specification. In previous work, the definition of the transduction relation defined by a synchronous TAG was given by appeal to an iterative rewriting process. The rewriting definition of derivation is problematic in that it greatly extends the expressivity of the formalism and makes the design of parsing algorithms difficult if not impossible. We introduce a simple, natural definition of synchronous tree-adjoining derivation, based on isomorphisms between standard tree-adjoining derivations, that avoids the expressivity and implementability problems of the original rewriting definition. The decrease in expressivity, which would otherwise make the method unusable, is offset by the incorporation of an alternative definition of standard tree-adjoining derivation, previously proposed for completely separate reasons, thereby making it practical to entertain using the natural definition of synchronous derivation. Nonetheless, some remaining problematic cases call for yel more flexibility in the definition; the isomorphism requirement may have to be relaxed. It remains for future research to rune the exact requirements on the allowable mappings.
1992-01-01T00:00:00ZGeneration and synchronous tree-adjoining grammarsShieber, StuartSchabes, Yveshttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20272012015-04-30T01:13:06Z1992-01-01T00:00:00ZGeneration and synchronous tree-adjoining grammars
Shieber, Stuart; Schabes, Yves
Tree-adjoining grammars (TAG) have been proposed as a formalism for generation based on the intuition that the extended domain of syntactic locality that TAGs provide should aid in localizing semantic dependencies as well, in turn serving as an aid to generation from semantic representations. We demonstrate that this intuition can be made concrete by using the formalism of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars. The use of synchronous TAGs for generation provides solutions to several problems with previous approaches to TAG generation. Furthermore, the semantic monotonicity requirement previously advocated for generation grammars as a computational aid is seen to be an inherent property of synchronous TAGs.
1992-01-01T00:00:00ZLabeling Point Features on Maps and DiagramsChristensen, JonMarks, JoeShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:265064392017-07-28T07:37:22Z1992-01-01T00:00:00ZLabeling Point Features on Maps and Diagrams
Christensen, Jon; Marks, Joe; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
A major factor affecting the clarity of graphical displays that include text labels is the degree to which labels obscure display features (including other labels) as a result of spatial overlap. Point-feature label placement (PFLP) is the problem of placing text labels adjacent to point features on a map or diagram so as to maximize legibility. This problem occurs frequently in the production of many types of informational graphics, though it arises most often in automated cartography. In this paper we present a comprehensive treatment of the PFLP problem, viewed as a type of combinatorial optimization problem. Complexity analysis reveals that the basic PFLP problem and most interesting variants of it are NP-hard. These negative results help inform a survey of previously reported algorithms for PFLP; not surprisingly, all such algorithms either have exponential time complexity or are incomplete. To solve the PFLP problem in practice, then, we must rely on good heuristic methods. We propose two new methods, one based on a discrete form of gradient descent, the other on simulated annealing, and report on a series of empirical tests comparing these and the other known algorithms for the problem. Based on this study, the first to be conducted, we identify the best approaches as a function of available computation time.
1992-01-01T00:00:00ZReconciling Abstract Structure and Concrete Data in Statistical Natural-Language ProcessingShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:97485232015-04-30T01:13:13Z1991-01-01T00:00:00ZReconciling Abstract Structure and Concrete Data in Statistical Natural-Language Processing
Shieber, Stuart M.
1991-01-01T00:00:00ZEllipsis and higher-order unificationPereira, Fernando C. N.Dalrymple, MaryShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20272002015-04-30T01:13:07Z1991-01-01T00:00:00ZEllipsis and higher-order unification
Pereira, Fernando C. N.; Dalrymple, Mary; Shieber, Stuart
We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations.
1991-01-01T00:00:00ZFoundational Issues in Natural Language Processing: IntroductionSells, PeterShieber, Stuart MerrillWasow, Thomashttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:170173342015-07-06T07:31:31Z1991-01-01T00:00:00ZFoundational Issues in Natural Language Processing: Introduction
Sells, Peter; Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Wasow, Thomas
1991-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Computational Complexity of Cartographic Label PlacementMarks, JoeShieber, Stuart Merrillhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:240197812017-07-28T08:08:57Z1991-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Computational Complexity of Cartographic Label Placement
Marks, Joe; Shieber, Stuart Merrill
We examine the computational complexity of cartographic label placement, a problem derived from the cartographer's task of placing text labels adjacent to map features in such a way as to minimize overlaps with other labels and map features. Cartographic label placement is one of the most time-consuming tasks in the production of maps. Consequently, several attempts have been made to automate the label-placement task for some or all classes of cartographic features (punctual, linear, or areal features), but all previously published algorithms for the most basic task--point-feature-label placement--either exhibit worst-case exponential time complexity, or incorporate incomplete heuristics that may fail to find an admissible labeling even when one exists. The computational complexity of label placement is therefore a matter of practical significance in automated cartography. We show that admissible label placement is NP-complete, even for very simple versions of the problem. Thus, no polynomial time algorithm exists unless P = N P . Similarly, we show that optimal label placement can be solved in polynomial time if and only if P = N P , and this result holds even if we require only approximately optimal placements. The results are especially interesting because cartographic label placement is one of the few combinatorial problems that remains NP-hard even under a geometric (Euclidean) interpretation. The results are of broader practical significance, as they also apply to point-feature labeling in non-cartographic displays, e.g., the labeling of points in a scatter plot.
1991-01-01T00:00:00ZSemantic-head-driven generationMoore, Robert C.Pereira, Fernando C. N.van Noord, GertjanShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20271992015-04-30T01:13:07Z1990-01-01T00:00:00ZSemantic-head-driven generation
Moore, Robert C.; Pereira, Fernando C. N.; van Noord, Gertjan; Shieber, Stuart
We present an algorithm for generating strings from logical form encodings that improves upon previous
algorithms in that it places fewer restrictions on the class of grammars to which it is applicable. In particular,
unlike a previous bottom-up generator, it allows use of semlantically nonmonotonic grammars, yet unlike
top-down methods, it also permits left-recursion. The enabling design feature of the algorithm is its implicit
traversal of the analysis tree for the string being generated in a semantic-head-driven fashion.
1990-01-01T00:00:00ZGeneration and synchronous tree-adjoining grammarsSchabes, YvesShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22588682015-04-30T01:13:10Z1990-01-01T00:00:00ZGeneration and synchronous tree-adjoining grammars
Schabes, Yves; Shieber, Stuart
Tree-adjoining grammars (TAG) have been proposed as a formalism for generation based on the intuition that the extended domain of syntactic locality that TAGs provide should aid in localizing semantic dependencies as well, in turn serving as an aid to generation from semantic representations. We demonstrate that this intuition can be made concrete by using the formalism of synchronous tree-adjoining grammars. The use of synchronous TAGs for generation provides solutions to several problems with previous approaches to TAG generation. Furthermore, the semantic monotonicity requirement previously advocated for generation grammars as a computational aid is seen to be an inherent property of synchronous TAGs.
1990-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous tree-adjoining grammarsSchabes, YvesShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652912015-04-30T01:13:06Z1990-01-01T00:00:00ZSynchronous tree-adjoining grammars
Schabes, Yves; Shieber, Stuart
The unique properties of tree-adjoining grammars (TAG) present a challenge for the application of TAGs beyond the limited confines of syntax, for instance, to the task of semantic interpretation or automatic translation of natural language. We present a variant of TAGs, called synchronous TAGs, which characterize correspondences between languages. The formalism's intended usage is to relate expressions of natural languages to their associated semantics represented in a logical form language, or to their translates in another natural language; in summary, we intend it to allow TAGs to be used beyond their role in syntax proper. We discuss the application of synchronous TAGs to concrete examples, mentioning primarily in passing some computational issues that arise in its interpretation
1990-01-01T00:00:00ZA semantic-head-driven generation algorithm for unification-based formalismsPereira, Fernando C. N.Moore, Robert C.van Noord, GertjanShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20505722015-04-30T01:13:06Z1989-01-01T00:00:00ZA semantic-head-driven generation algorithm for unification-based formalisms
Pereira, Fernando C. N.; Moore, Robert C.; van Noord, Gertjan; Shieber, Stuart
We present an algorithm for generating strings from logical form encodings that improves upon previous algorithms in that it places fewer restrictions on the class of grammars to which it is applicable. In particular, unlike an Earley deduction generator (Shieber, 1988), it allows use of semantically nonmonotonic grammars, yet unlike topdown methods, it also permits left-recursion. The enabling design feature of the algorithm is its implicit traversal of the analysis tree for the string being generated in a semantic-head-driven fashion.
1989-01-01T00:00:00ZA uniform architecture for parsing and generationShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652862015-04-30T01:13:02Z1988-01-01T00:00:00ZA uniform architecture for parsing and generation
Shieber, Stuart
The use of a single grammar for both parsing and generation is an idea with a certain elegance, the desirability of which several researchers have noted. In this paper, we discuss a more radical possibility: not only can a single grammar be used by different processes engaged in various "directions" of processing, but one and the same language-processing architecture can be used for processing the grammar in the various modes. In particular, parsing and generation can be viewed as two processes engaged in by a single parameterized theorem prover for the logical interpretation of the formalism. We discuss our current implementation of such an architecture, which is parameterized in such a way that it can be used for either purpose with grammars written in the PATR formalism. Furthermore, the architecture allows fine tuning to reflect different processing strategies, including parsing models intended to mimic psycholinguistic phenomena. This tuning allows the parsing system to operate within the same realm of efficiency as previous architectures for parsing alone, but with much greater flexibility for engaging in other processing regimes.
1988-01-01T00:00:00ZAn algorithm for generating quantifier scopingsHobbs, JerryShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20271942015-04-30T01:13:06Z1987-01-01T00:00:00ZAn algorithm for generating quantifier scopings
Hobbs, Jerry; Shieber, Stuart
The syntactic structure of a sentence often manifests quite clearly the predicate-argument structure and relations of grammatical subordination. But scope dependencies are not so transparent. As a result, many systems for representing the semantics of sentences have ignored scoping or generating scoping mechanisms that have often been inexplicit as to the range of scopings they choose among or profligate in the scopings they allow.
In this paper, we present an algorithm, along with proofs of some of its important properties, that generates scoped semantic forms from unscoped expressions encoding predicate-argument structure. The algorithm is not profligate as are those based on permutation of quantifiers, and it can provide a solid foundation for computational solutions where completeness is sacrificed for efficiency and heuristic efficacy.
1987-01-01T00:00:00ZA simple reconstruction of GPSGShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652872015-04-30T01:13:05Z1986-01-01T00:00:00ZA simple reconstruction of GPSG
Shieber, Stuart
Like most linguistic theories, the theory of generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) has described language axiomatically, that is, as a set of universal and language-specific constraints on the well-formedness of linguistic elements of some sort. The coverage and detailed analysis of English grammar in the ambitious recent volume by Gazdar, Klein, Pullum, and Sag entitled Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar are impressive, in part because of the complexity of the axiomatic system developed by the authors. In this paper. We examine the possibility that simpler descriptions of the same theory can be achieved through a slightly different, albeit still axiomatic, method. Rather than characterize the well-formed trees directly, we progress in two stages by procedurally characterizing the well-formedness axioms themselves, which in turn characterize the trees.
1986-01-01T00:00:00ZUnification and Grammatical TheorySag, Ivan A.Kaplan, RonaldKarttunen, LauriKay, MartinPollard, CarlShieber, Stuart M.Zaenen, Anniehttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:113240172015-04-30T01:13:14Z1986-01-01T00:00:00ZUnification and Grammatical Theory
Sag, Ivan A.; Kaplan, Ronald; Karttunen, Lauri; Kay, Martin; Pollard, Carl; Shieber, Stuart M.; Zaenen, Annie
This paper informally presents a new view of grammar that has emerged from a number of distinct but related lines of investigation in theoretical and computational linguistics. Under this view, many current linguistic theories—-including Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and categorial grammar (CG)—-fall within a general framework of unification grammar. In such theories the linguistic objects under study are associated with linguistic information about the objects, which information is modeled by mathematical objects called feature structures. Linguistic phenomena are modeled by constraints of equality over the feature structures; the fundamental operation upon the feature structures, allowing solution of such systems of equations, is a simple merging of their information content called unification. Although differences among these theories remain great, this new appreciation of the common threads in research paradigms previously thought ideologically incompatible provides an opportunity for a uniting of efforts and results among these areas, as well as the ability to compare previously incommensurate claims.
1986-01-01T00:00:00ZCriteria for Designing Computer Facilities for Linguistic AnalysisShieber, Stuart M.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:47292452015-04-30T01:13:12Z1985-01-01T00:00:00ZCriteria for Designing Computer Facilities for Linguistic Analysis
Shieber, Stuart M.
Abstract: In the natural-language-processing research community, the usefulness of computer tools for testing linguistic analyses is often taken for granted. Linguists, on the other hand, have generally been unaware of or ambivalent about such devices. We discuss several aspects of computer use that are preeminent in establishing the utility for linguistic research of computer tools and describe several factors that must be considered in designing such computer tools to aid in testing linguistic analyses of grammatical phenomena. A series of design alternatives, some theoretically and some practically motivated, is then based on the resultant criteria. We present one way of pinning down these choices which culminates in a description of a particular grammar formalism for use in computer linguistic tools. The PATR-II formalism this serves to exemplify our general perspective.
1985-01-01T00:00:00ZEvidence against the context-freeness of natural languageShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20266182015-04-30T01:13:04Z1985-01-01T00:00:00ZEvidence against the context-freeness of natural language
Shieber, Stuart
1985-01-01T00:00:00ZUsing restriction to extend parsing algorithms for complex-feature-based formalismsShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20517602015-04-30T01:13:04Z1985-01-01T00:00:00ZUsing restriction to extend parsing algorithms for complex-feature-based formalisms
Shieber, Stuart
Grammar formalisms based on the encoding of grammatical information in complex-valued feature systems enjoy some currency both in linguistics and natural-language-processing research. Such formalisms can be thought of by analogy to context-free grammars as generalizing the notion of nonterminal symbol from a finite domain of atomic elements to a possibly infinite domain of directed graph structures of a certain sort. Unfortunately, in moving to an infinite nonterminal domain, standard methods of parsing may no longer be applicable to the formalism. Typically, the problem manifests itself as gross inefficiency or even nontermination of the algorithms. In this paper, we discuss a solution to the problem of extending parsing algorithms to formalisms with possibly infinite nonterminal domains, a solution based on a general technique we call restriction. As a particular example of such an extension, we present a complete, correct, terminating extension of Earley's algorithm that uses restriction to perform top-down filtering. Our implementation of this algorithm demonstrates the drastic elimination of chart edges that can be achieved by this technique. Finally, we describe further uses for the technique---including parsing other grammar formalisms, including definite-clause grammars; extending other parsing algorithms, including LR methods and syntactic preference modeling algorithms; and efficient indexing.
1985-01-01T00:00:00ZDirect parsing of ID/LP grammarsShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20316702015-04-30T01:13:04Z1984-01-01T00:00:00ZDirect parsing of ID/LP grammars
Shieber, Stuart
The Immediate Dominance/Linear Precedence (ID/LP) formalism is a recent
extension of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) designed to
perform some of the tasks previously assigned to metarules--for example,
modeling the word-order characteristics of so-called free-word-order
languages. It allows a simple specification of classes of rules that
differ only in constituent order. ID/LP grammars (as well as metarule
grammars) have been proposed for use in parsing by expanding them into
equivalent context-free grammars. We develop a parsing algorithm, based
on the algorithm of Earley, for parsing ID/LP grammars directly,
circumventing the initial expansion phase. A proof of correctness is
supplied. We also discuss some aspects of the time complexity of the
algorithm and some formal properties associated with ID/LP grammars and
their relationship to context-free grammars.
1984-01-01T00:00:00ZThe design of a computer language for linguistic informationShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23096592015-04-30T01:13:11Z1984-01-01T00:00:00ZThe design of a computer language for linguistic information
Shieber, Stuart
A considerable body of accumulated knowledge about the design of languages for communicating information to computers has been derived from the subfields of programming language design and semantics. It has been the goal of the PATR group at SRI to utilize a relevant portion of this knowledge in implementing tools to facilitate communication of linguistic information to computers. The PATR-II formalism is our current computer language for encoding linguistic information. This paper, a brief overview of that formalism, attempts to explicate our design decisions in terms of a set of properties that effective computer languages should incorporate.
1984-01-01T00:00:00ZThe semantics of grammar formalisms seen as computer languagesShieber, StuartPereira, Fernando C. N.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23096582015-04-30T01:13:10Z1984-01-01T00:00:00ZThe semantics of grammar formalisms seen as computer languages
Shieber, Stuart; Pereira, Fernando C. N.
The design, implementation, and use of grammar formalisms for natural language have constituted a major branch of computational linguistics throughout its development. By viewing grammar formalisms as just a special case of computer languages, we can take advantage of the machinery of denotational semantics to provide a precise specification of their meaning. Using Dana Scott's domain theory, we elucidate the nature of the feature systems used in augmented phrase-structure grammar formalisms, in particular those of recent versions of generalized phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and PATR-II, and provide a denotational semantics for a simple grammar formalism. We find that the mathematical structures developed for this purpose contain an operation of feature generalization, not available in those grammar formalisms, that can be used to give a partial account of the effect of coordination on syntactic features.
1984-01-01T00:00:00ZFormal constraints on metarulesShieber, StuartRobinson, Jane J.Stucky, Susan U.Uszkoreit, Hanshttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23096602015-04-30T01:13:02Z1983-01-01T00:00:00ZFormal constraints on metarules
Shieber, Stuart; Robinson, Jane J.; Stucky, Susan U.; Uszkoreit, Hans
Metagrammatical formalisms that combine context-free phrase structure rules and metarules (MPS grammars) allow concise statement of generalizations about the syntax of natural languages. Unconstrained MPS grammars, unfortunately, are not computationally "safe." We evaluate several proposals for constraining them, basing our assessment on computational tractability and explanatory adequacy. We show that none of them satisfies both criteria, and suggest new directions for research on alternative metagrammatical formalisms.
1983-01-01T00:00:00ZSentence disambiguation by a shift-reduce parsing techniqueShieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22652922015-04-30T01:13:03Z1983-01-01T00:00:00ZSentence disambiguation by a shift-reduce parsing technique
Shieber, Stuart
Native speakers of English show definite and consistent preferences for certain readings of syntactically ambiguous sentences. A user of a natural-language-processing system would naturally expect it to reflect the same preferences. Thus, such systems must model in some way the linguistic performance as well as the linguistic competence of the native speaker. We have developed a parsing algorithm---a variant of the LALR(1) shift-reduce algorithm---that models the preference behavior of native speakers for a range of syntactic preference phenomena reported in the psycholinguistic literature, including the recent data on lexical preferences. The algorithm yields the preferred parse deterministically, without building multiple parse trees and choosing among them. As a side effect, it displays appropriate behavior in processing the much discussed garden-path sentences. The parsing algorithm has been implemented and has confirmed the feasibility of our approach to the modeling of these phenomena.
1983-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Formalism and Implementation of PATR-IIShieber, Stuart MerrillUszkoreit, HansPereira, FernandoRobinson, JaneTyson, Mabryhttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:234923762017-07-28T07:54:19Z1983-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Formalism and Implementation of PATR-II
Shieber, Stuart Merrill; Uszkoreit, Hans; Pereira, Fernando; Robinson, Jane; Tyson, Mabry
1983-01-01T00:00:00ZTranslating English into logical formRosenschein, Stanley J.Shieber, Stuarthttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:20517512015-04-30T01:13:03Z1982-01-01T00:00:00ZTranslating English into logical form
Rosenschein, Stanley J.; Shieber, Stuart
A scheme for syntax-directed translation that mirrors compositional model-theoretic semantics is discussed. The scheme is the basis for an English translation system called PATR and was used to specify a semantically interesting fragment of English, including such constructs as tense, aspect, modals, and various lexically controlled verb complement structures. PATR was embedded in a question-answering system that replied appropriately to questions requiring the computation of logical entailments.
1982-01-01T00:00:00Z